AT THE NORTH 




1 



l I <& 



Frank Bolles 




Class _J i? 

Book. i6 

Copyright N°_ 



COPyKIGHT DEPOSIT. 



t&igitor^ €bition 



AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP 
WATER 




MOl'XT CHOCORUA IN WINTEK 



AT THE NORTH OF 
BEARCAMP WATER 

Chronicles of a Stroller 

in New England 
from July to December 

BY 

FRANK BOLLES 

M 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




**"* 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
«t)f RtoetiiHe pre** Cambri&g* 



COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY FRANK BOLLM 
COPYRIGHT, I917, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Ate 



-4 1317 



©CI.A467303 
"Vi G I 



CONTENTS. 



PAOK 

A Thunderstorm in the Forest .... 1 

The Heart of the Mountain 10 

A Lonely Lake 27 

Following a Lost Trail 43 

A Night Alone on Chocorua 62 

Bringing Home the Bear 82 

The Dead Tree's Day 96 

Migration H8 

Trapping Gnomes 132 

Old Shag 146 

My Heart's in the Highlands 157 

The Vintage of the Leaves 168 

Chocorua in November 194 

Among the Wind-Swept Lakes .... 211 

'Lection Day, '92 219 

A Wintry Wilderness 230 

Climbing Bear Mountain in the Snow . . . 243 

In the Paugus Woods 252 

At the Foot of Passaconaway 264 

Christmas at Sabba Day Falls . 273 

Down the Torrent's Pathway 285 

Index 295 



3fitottatlMi 

To drink the wine of mountain air 
Beside the Bearcamp Water. 

Whittier, Among the Hills, 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Mount Chocorua in Winter . . . Frontispiece 
Water-Lilies in Chocorua Lake . . . . 16 ' 

Chocorua from Heron Pond 28*' 

Canoe Birches of the Bearcamp Valley . .40" 
The Peak of Chocorua from the Hammond Trail . 64*^ 

"The Cow" 68 v 

The Peak from the Southeast 72* 

The Peak from the North 76 l 

View from " the Cow," showing Moat Mountain 

and Mount Pequawket Beyond . . . 80' 

The Dead Tree 98' 

Mount Chocorua and Chocorua Lake in Summer . 118 
Two Kinds of Gnomes — Hesperomys and Zapus . 138 
Pauqus from Wonalancet Road .... 146 
Chocorua seen from the Side of Paugus . . 150 
Whiteface and Passaconaway from Paugus . . 154* 
Crowlands, formerly the Old Doe Farm . . 158' 

Twilight on the Lake 174 

Chocorua and Dr. Chadwick's Pines . . . 184' 
The Peak of Chocorua from Bald Mountain . 206 
Mount Chocorua from Whitton Pond . . . 216 
" Moat, like a breaking wave " 232 
Mount Chocorua and the Lake in Winter . . 250 
Frost-covered Spruce near the Summit of Passa- 
conaway 262 

Moat Mountain and the Swift River . . . 290 



AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP 
WATER. 



A THUNDERSTORM IN THE FOREST. 

During nearly the whole of the forenoon of 
July 3, 1892, a soft rain had been falling. It 
had begun in the night to the discomfiture of 
the whippoorwills, but not to the extinguish- 
ment of their voices. It continued until nearly 
noon, when the wind shifted from east to west, 
patches of blue sky appeared, and ever and 
anon gleams of sunlight fell upon the distant 
forest across the lake, or slid slowly over the 
tree-tops on the side of Chocorua. Bird voices 
grew stronger with the promise of fair weather. 
Hermit thrushes, veeries, red-eyed vireos, and 
Maryland yellow-throats sang four invitations 
from as many points of the compass, and I said 
Yes to the veeries and sought the swamp. A 
New Hampshire swamp is full of attractions at 
all seasons. In winter the great northern hares 
make innumerable paths across its soft snow, 



2 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

and tempt the gunner into the chilly gloom in 
search of a shot at their phantom forms. In 
spring a host of migrating warblers makes 
merry in its tree-tops, and the song of the win- 
ter wren is sent from heaven to give joy to its 
shadows. Summer brings to it many a shy 
orchid blooming among the ferns, and the fish- 
erman finds the trout in its brook's placid pools 
long after they have ceased to bite well in the 
upper reaches of the stream. There are no 
venomous serpents hanging from its moss-grown 
trees, no tigers concealed in its brakes, and no 
ague lingering in its stagnant pools. It is a 
safe swamp and kind, yet none the less a swamp. 
When I reached its borders, after crossing 
the meadow, I found wild roses in bloom. It 
was of these, doubtless, that the veery was sing- 
ing so bewitchingly. Certainly nothing less 
fair coidd have prompted such magic music. 
Moreover, the veery's nest, framed in nodding 
osmundas, is near these beautiful blossoms, 
with many a pool and thicket between it and 
hard ground. Passing into the darkness of the 
swamp, I glanced back at the sky. The north 
and west were filled with black clouds which 
were stirred by passionate winds in their midst. 
A low growl of thunder came through the heavy 
air. I felt as though forbidden to enter the 
mysteries of the swamp, as though warned that 



A THUNDERSTORM IN THE FOREST. 3 

danger lay within those aisles of twilight. The 
veery ceased its song. No bird voice broke the 
stillness of the gloom, and a hush of expectation 
held every leaf motionless. The branches closed 
behind me and I stole on between lofty trees 
with mossy trunks, over fallen logs, and through 
the dripping jungle of ferns. Upland woods 
are cleaner, stronger, more symmetrical than 
swamp growth, but they have not the effect of 
tropical luxuriance which the swamp forest pos- 
sesses. The mosses, lichens, ferns of many 
species, climbing vines, and such large-leaved 
plants as the veratrum and skunk cabbage, give 
to the moist land an air of wealth of leaf -growth 
which is distinctive. 

Two species of orchid were conspicuous, ris- 
ing just above the ferns. They were the pur- 
ple-fringed, just coming into bloom, and the 
white, which was abundant. Splashing back 
and forth through the shallow pools, gathering 
the spikes of the white orchis, I did not at first 
notice a distant sound which grew in volume 
until its sullen vibration could not be ignored. 
The tree-tops above me gave a sudden, vicious 
swish. Crows to the westward were cawinr 
wildly. The roar of the storm became unmis^ 
takable; the swamp grew darker; a few bio- 
drops of rain fell, and then, as though a train 
were plunging down noisy rails upon the forest, 



4 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC A MP WATER. 

the rain and wind leaped upon the trees, filling 
the air with deafening sounds, and twisting the 
branches until it seemed as though the whole 
structure of the woods was about to collapse in 
one vast ruin. Then through the tormented 
tree-tops the floods fell. They were white like 
snow, and seemed to be a fallen part of a white 
sky which showed now and then as the forest 
swayed back and forth in the wind's arms. 
"Wet as the swamp had been before, its colors 
became more vivid under this deluge. Every 
leaf grew greener, and each lichen gave out new 
tints as it drank in rain. The trunks of the 
trees assumed more distinctive shades ; that of 
the ash became brown, of the yellow birch 
almost like saffron, and of the canoe birch glis- 
tening white. The rain pelting into my eyes 
bade me look less at the sky and more at the 
beauties at my feet. Beauties there surely were 
at my feet, both of color and form. There were 
no flowers, but the leaves were enough to satisfy 
both eye and mind, — large leaves and small, 
coarse and delicate, strong and feeble, stiff and 
drooping. Some were long and slender, others 
deeply cleft, some round, or smoothly oval, 
others shaped like arrow-heads. Some received 
the rain submissively and bowed more and more 
before it, others responded buoyantly as each 
drop struck them and was tossed off. In some 



A THUNDERSTORM IN THE FOREST. 5 

the up-and-down motion communicated by the 
falling drop was by the formation of the leaf- 
stalk transformed at once into an odd vibration 
from side to side, which was like an indignant 
shaking of the head. 

Looking at the marvelous variety in the out- 
lines of these gleaming leaves, I suddenly found 
my memory tugging me back to the schoolroom 
where I was first taught botany. I recalled one 
melancholy morning when my teacher, who 
knew neither the derivation of botanical terms 
nor the true beauties of botanical science, or- 
dered me to commit to memory the list of adjec- 
tives applied to the various shapes of leaves. 
The dose prejudiced me against botany for full 
ten years of my life, yet here in this glistening 
carpet of the swamp I saw "lanceolate," "auric- 
ulate," "cordate," "pinnate," written, not in 
letters of gold, but in something equally impres- 
sive to the memory, and much more easy for a 
dull teacher to obtain. 

When one is in the deep woods and a flash of 
lightning comes, the eye seems to see a narrow 
horizontal belt of light play swiftly across the 
foliage immediately in the line of vision. If I 
looked at the ground I caught it there; if my 
eyes were fixed on the low branches at a dis- 
tance, the flash was there. Each flash was 
promptly followed by the glorious mountain 



C AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

thunder which is so much more impressive than 
that in level regions. At first heaven was rent 
by the sound; then mountain after mountain 
seemed to fall in noisy ruin, the great ledges 
tumbling in upon each other with deafening 
shocks ; then the sound rolled away through the 
sky, striking here and there upon some cloudy 
promontory and giving out a softened boom or 
waning rumble. 

For full twenty minutes the trees writhed in 
the wind, the rain fell, the leaves nodded and 
shivered under the drops, and the rhythmic roar 
of the rain was broken irregularly by the thun- 
der. As time passed, the shower slackened, the 
thunder followed the lightning at longer and 
longer intervals, the wind seemed to take deeper 
and less nervous breaths, and I listened to dis- 
cover what creature of the swamp would first 
raise its voice above the subsiding storm. A 
mosquito hovered before me, dodging the drops 
in its vibratory flight. If it was buzzing I 
could not hear it. Suddenly a single call from 
a blue jay came, in a lull of the wind, from a 
thicket of spruces. "Yoly-'oly," it said, and 
was silent again. I took a few steps forward, 
and the shrill alarm-note of a chipmunk sounded 
through the gloom. I strolled slowly through 
the drenched and dripping woods fragrant with 
the perfume of moss and mould. It was more 



A THUNDERSTORM IX THE FOREST. « 

like wading than walking, for every leaf had 
a drop of cold water ready to give away to 
whatever first touched it. A ray of sunlight 
dodged through the lifting clouds and fell into 
the swamp. The song of a parula warbler, 
distilled by it, floated back skyward. As the 
west grew golden and blue, bird-songs sounded 
from every quarter. The merry chickadees, 
conversational vireos, and querulous wood pe- 
wees vied with each other and the tree-toads in 
replacing the orchestral passion of the storm by 
the simple music of their solos. 

Leaving the swamp, I climbed the terrace 
marking the ancient border of the lake, which 
once included the swamp in its area, and passed 
through a grove of slender birches and poplars. 
Their stems, streaming with rain, were as 
bright as polished marble, and their foliage, 
illuminated by the clear sunlight, was marvel- 
ously green against the deep blue of the sky. 
Presently a vista opened northward, and at its 
end rose the dark peak of Chocorua. After a 
rain this towering rock presents a noticeably 
different appearance from its normal coloring. 
Most of its surface is covered by lichens, one 
species of which, when dry, resembles burnt 
paper. When rain falls upon these lichens they 
alter their tints, and the burnt paper species in 
particular becomes so green that a wonderful 



8 AT THE NORTE OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

change takes place in the whole coloring of the 
mountain. Looked upon through the birch 
vista, the air being clear and clean, and the 
colors of the mountain uncommonly bright, the 
peak seemed near at hand, and even grander 
than usual. There are few things in New Eng- 
land as truly picturesque as this horn of Cho- 
corua. Three thousand feet above its lake and 
the level of the Saco, the great rock lifts itself 
with bold and naked outline into the midst of 
the sky. No foot seems able to creep up its 
precipitous slopes to its dizzy tip, and even the 
sturdy spruce can cling only to the deep clefts 
in its storm-swept ledges. There was a time 
when the forest reached to its crest, and when 
the cold rocks, now naked, were covered deep 
in soil and mosses. Passaconaway, close by, 
shows how this could have been, and how Cho- 
corua must have looked draped in evergreens. 
Fire and hurricane destroyed the trees; the 
parched soil was washed away from the rocks ; 
and now the only trace of the old forest growth 
is an occasional bleached stump or log hidden 
in a cleft in the ledges. 

As I strolled homewards I passed a spot 
where the linnaea has covered several square 
yards of ground in a birch wood. The tiny 
bells had rung out their elfin music for the year. 
By dint of laborious search on hands and knees 



A THUNDERSTORM IN THE FOREST. 9 

I found eight of the flowers, still wonderfully 
fragrant though somewhat faded. All the rest 
of the chime had fallen. Not far away a growth 
of dogbane fringed the path. I picked some of 
its blossoms and held the two sets of bells side 
by side in my hand. The comparison made 
me feel sorry for the dogbane. 



THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN. 

Floating upon the clear waters of Chocorua 
Lake in the latter part of a warm July afternoon, 
and looking northward, I see the coolness of 
night beginning to grow in the heart of the 
mountain. At first there is but a slender dark 
line marking a deep ravine, through which a 
brook flows; then the shadow widens until a 
o-reat hollow in the mountain's side is filled with 
shade. As the sun sinks the shadow reaches 
higher and higher upon the wooded flanks of 
the two spurs which hold the hollow between 
them, until at last only the vast rock of the 
peak, resting upon its forest-clad shoulders, is 
left warm in the sun's rays. The point where 
the shadow begins to form is more than a thou- 
sand feet above the level of the lake. From it, 
reaching upwards, two folds in the forest dra- 
pery extend towards the foot of the peak. One 
marks a brook coming from the upper part of 
the right-hand ridge, the other a brook which 
rises at the very head of the left-hand, or west 
ridge. The heart of the mountain is the wild 
ravine where these two streams mingle in per- 



TEE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN. 11 

petual coolness and shadow. No path leads to 
it and few are the feet which have found a way 
to its beauties. There is a peculiar charm in a 
spot unknown to the many. Its loneliness en- 
dears it to the mind, and gives its associations 
a rarer flavor. If besides being unfrequented 
it is singularly beautiful in itself, it becomes a 
shrine, a place sacred to one's best thoughts. 
To me the heart of Chocorua is a shrine, all 
the more valued because of the weariness of 
flesh required to attain to it. 

Early on the morning of July 10, I set out 
across the pastures for the foot of the mountain. 
The sun was hot, the air hazy, and not a breath 
of a breeze made the aspens quiver. In the 
shaded hollows something of the night's chill 
still lingered, and from them floated the psalm 
of the hermit and the gypsy music of the veery. 
Now and then the clear, cool phoebe-note of the 
chickadee reached the ear, in contrast to the 
trill of the field sparrows which came from the 
warmest parts of the grass-land. On the hill 
to the westward young crows with high-pitched 
voices clamored for food, and quarreled with 
each other on their shady perch in the beeches. 

The flowers which bloomed by the path were 
children of heat, types of midsummer. Buds 
were large on the goldenrod, the St. John's-wort 
was in full bloom, and so, too, were the diurnal 



12 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

evening-primrose, the fleabane and dogbane, 
both worthy of sweeter names; the yarrow, as 
disagreeable among flowers as a cynic is among 
men ; the tall potentilla, yellow clover, and, rep- 
resenting the purple flowers, the brunella. In 
many places thick beds of checkerberry, decked 
with brilliant berries, were made gayer by many 
heads of the brunella growing through them. 
The brunella is shaped somewhat like the con- 
ventional chess castle, but the castle is never 
quite complete while blossoming, owing to the 
lack of harmony among the many little flowers 
which unite to form its head. Low, running 
blackberry dotted the banks with uninteresting 
white blossoms, and the stiff spikes of the spiraea 
were abundant. The daisy, stigmatized as white- 
weed by the indignant farmers, still displayed 
a few battered blossoms, which kept company 
with heads of red and of white clover. After 
passing these flowers of summer, it seemed 
strange, on descending into a deep cup-shaped 
basin where a small pond fed by springs is 
shaded by lofty oaks and birches, to find the 
houstonia still in full glory, and the dwarf cor- 
nel blooming in dark and mossy nooks. Ani- 
mate nature takes solid comfort in a hot day. 
As I stole softly downward to the shore of the 
little pond, scores of tadpoles shot away from 
the edge of the water into its green depths. 



THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN. 13 

Painted tortoises, which had been baking on 
logs and stones in the full glare of the sun, 
dropped off unwillingly into the water. Count- 
less dragonflies skimmed the surface of the 
pond, devouring smaller insects, and from a 
dead limb overlooking the shore, a crow, whose 
plumage gleamed with iridescent lights, flapped 
sluggishly out of sight among the trees. Snakes 
love to lie coiled in the hottest sunlight; squir- 
rels stretch themselves contentedly on horizon- 
tal limbs and bask by the hour; the fox, wood- 
chuck, and weasel, and even toads and newts, 
and those so-called birds of darkness the barred 
owls, seek the broadest glare of the midsummer 
sun and absorb comfort from its scorching rays. 
Taking tribute from the pond-basin by a deep 
drink of ice-cold water at a spring in its bank, 
I crossed another strip of open pasture — where 
the tinkle-tankle of the cow -bells sounded with 
each bite the cows took of the grass — and 
gained the edge of the forest and the foot of the 
mountain. There was something akin to cool- 
ness in the shade of the birches, poplars, and 
beeches. New flowers bloomed here and new 
birds called. The dependent bells of the white 
pyrola, of the small green pyrola, and of the 
quaint pipsissewa were found beneath the brakes. 
Here, too, was the Indian pipe, looking as 
though formed from sheets of colorless wax, 



14 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

and its tawny sister the pine sap (Monotropa 
hypopitys). The wintergreens are strong, posi- 
tive herbs with rich pungent flavor, but the pale 
parasitic plants are mere negations. They are 
the "poor relations" among flowers, content to 
draw their sustenance from others, while show- 
ing no color, giving out no perfume, attracting 
no butterflies, and not even daring to face the 
blue sky until they are dead. 

The oven-bird stepped primly about upon her 
neat carpet of dry leaves, the red-eyed vireo 
preached his perpetual homily from the tree- 
tops, a young Cooper's hawk screamed shrilly 
in the distance, and two inquisitive red-capped 
sapsuckers hitched up and down tree-trunks near 
me, while I hooted at them after the manner 
of my barred owls. A grouse had been wallow- 
ing among the leaves, and had left a round hol- 
low in the dust with five discarded feathers and 
the prints of her feet to show that she had been 
there. It ana sylvatica, the wood-frog, betrayed 
himself by leaping over the dry beech leaves. I 
followed him quickly as he sought to elude me. 
Not only were his leaps long, but his skill in 
doubling was something marvelous. His second 
jump was generally at right angles with the 
first, and thrice he no sooner struck the ground 
than he turned and rebounded upon his tracks, 
so that he passed over or between my feet. 



TEE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN. 15 

When he was weary I caught hiin and, laying 
him on my knee, stroked the nape of his neck, 
his back and sides. He soon ceased to struggle 
and sat motionless. I laid him gently on his 
back and stroked him beneath. His throat 
throbbed and his eyes blinked, but he made no 
effort to escape. Then I restored him to his 
proper position, and extended one leg after an- 
other. He was as pliable and nerveless as a 
rubber frog. Finally I let him alone, wonder- 
ing how soon he would hop away ; but he showed 
a willingness to spend the day on my knee, and 
not until I placed him on the leaves did he seem 
to awaken to life and the advantages of free- 
dom. 

A few rods beyond, a toad hopped from me 
and I followed him to see what method of escape 
he would adopt. As soon as he saw that he was 
pursued he increased his speed and by a series 
of rapid hops reached a cavern under the arched 
root of a stump and plunged out of sight in its 
depths. Our toads, although of but a single 
species, vary in color from black to the paleness 
of a dry beech leaf. This one, living in the 
midst of pale browns and yellows, was nearly 
as light in tone as the light-footed Rana sylva- 
tica. 

The color of the dry beech leaves as they lie 
upon the ground is sometimes curiously be- 



16 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

witched by the spots of sunlight which dapple 
the woodland carpet. Walking with the sun 
behind me, the sunlight, especially where it fell 
in small round spots on the beech leaves before 
me, was of an unmistakably amethystine hue. 
Several years ago when I first noticed this, I 
supposed it to be due to temporary causes, but 
I am now convinced that the color will always 
be distinguishable when the conditions named 
are favorable. 

The loveliest July flower in the woods fring- 
ing Chocorua is the mitchella, named by Lin- 
naeus for Dr. John Mitchell of Virginia. In 
their small round leaves of dark glossy green, 
their creeping stems, their modest, delicate- 
tinted and highly -perfumed blossoms, the flower 
of Linnaeus and the flower of Mitchell are much 
alike. The partridge-berry, as the mitchella 
is commonly called, begins to bloom just as the 
linnaea bells cease to swing. It is an ever- 
green, and all through the winter its bright 
green leaves and red berries are one of the 
pledges of returning life after snow and ice have 
vanished. The flower is small and faces the 
sky. It is white with a delicate rosy blush 
tinging its corolla, chiefly on its outer side. 
The four pointed petals open wide and curve 
back, exposing the whole interior of the flower 
to view. Each petal is covered on its inner 



THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN. 17 

surface with a thick velvety nap which is the 
distinguishing characteristic of the blossom. 
The perfume of this flower is both powerful and 
pleasant. When freshly picked it suggests the 
scent of the water-lily, coupled with something 
as spicy and enduring as the heavier perfume of 
heliotrope. 

Fifteen or twenty minutes' walking over the 
beech leaves brought me within hearing of the 
torrent which flows from the heart of the moun- 
tain. Presently I came to the edge of its cut- 
ting and saw far below me, through the trees 
which filled the gorge, the flash of its waters 
and the vivid green of mosses. Walking up- 
stream along the face of the bank, yet neither 
climbing nor descending, I struck the level of 
the water at a point not many rods distant. I 
had not gone down to the brook ; it had come 
up to me. The whole ravine was filled with its 
music, and following down with its eager flow 
was a current of cold air. Above, in the woods, 
quiet and heat had prevailed. Here noise and 
coolness ruled with absolute sway. The sound 
came in waves as did the water and the breeze, 
but no human senses could measure the inter- 
vals between the beats. The sound seemed 
threefold, — a splash, a murmur, and a deeper 
roar. The roar reached me even if I pressed 
my hands tightly over my ears ; while, if I made 



18 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

ear-trumpets of my hands, the splashing thus 
intensified drowned the heavier sounds. The 
rhythm of the water was most prettily shown 
on a boulder faced with thick moss. When 
the high water came it poured over the top of 
the rock, and the moss was filled with white 
shining drops coursing downward through it; 
but, on the reaction, it instantly became vivid 
green. The same pulsation showed in each 
cascade, which was greater then less, greater 
then less, in each second of time. As I bent 
over a pool, taking now and then a sip of the 
icy water, a small trout suddenly jumped near 
the foot of the fall below. He was intensely 
busy working about in the edge of the falling 
water, where rising bubbles and whirling foam 
half concealed him. In color he looked not un- 
like a beech leaf, and he moved so constantly 
that only an attentive eye could distinguish him 
from the waste of the stream whirled about in 
the eddies. I cast him some moss and mould, 
and he darted hither and thither in the water 
clouded by it, snapping up bits of food or specks 
which he mistook for food. His eagerness and 
restlessness seemed born of the restlessness of 
the stream and the keen temperature of the water 
in which he lived. 

There was something of the impressiveness of 
the sea in this mountain brook. The sea rolls 



THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN. 19 

its waves upon the shore by night and by day 
all through the endless years, and this brook 
rolls down its tons upon tons of water by night 
and by day forever. It seems impossible that 
this and all the other streams which flow down 
rocky mountain-sides can be nourished simply 
by the softly falling rain and snow. 

Much of the fascination of the sea is in its 
voice, so seldom hushed, so often roused to an- 
ger. The torrent by which I stood had some- 
thing of the same weird power. For the mo- 
ment, all outside those narrow wooded steeps, 
between which the splash, murmur, and roar of 
the stream pervaded everything and overwhelmed 
everything, all beyond that controlling sound 
was forgotten, barred out, lost. All within the 
power of the stream was under a spell, cooling, 
soothing, comforting. 

To reach the heart of the mountain nearly a 
mile of brook bed had to be traveled, so I 
climbed upward rock by rock, past falls and 
pools, clusters of nodding ferns, bridges of an- 
cient trees now hung with mosses, and sloping 
ledges faced with moss, down which the water 
rolled in glistening sheets. At one point the 
brook, years ago, had cut through a ledge which 
crossed its path diagonally. One great shoulder 
of rock remained, protruding from the western 
bank and hanging over the water, which poured 



20 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

into a black cavern beneath, making a whirlpool 
in the darkness. The temperature under this 
ledge was nearly forty degrees lower than on 
the°top of the bank a few yards above. Stand- 
ing by the ledge, I counted nine distinct cascades 
varying from three to six feet in height. One 
of them was an ideally symmetrical fall, for the 
whole body of water, gathered between two 
rocky faces, fell into a deep round pool just at 
its centre. Another fall showed clearly why the 
water under a cascade looks white. The water 
poured into a very broad, deep basin at its upper 
corner, leaving most of the surface undisturbed ; 
and between the limpid falling water and the 
flat face of rock behind it air was caught and 
sucked downward by the flow. It was carried 
to the very bottom of the pool, where, breaking 
into small round bubbles, it struggled to the sur- 
face. Strings and masses of snow-white bub- 
bles filled the area in front and at each side of 
the fall, while some were drawn some distance 
down-stream by the escaping water. These 
bubbles, when under water, produced the white- 
ness of the pool, and, on reaching the surface, 
burst and made a large part of its foam and 
spray. In this pool, as in many others, small 
trout hovered about the edge of the rising bub- 
bles, seizing upon everything which looked like 
food. They rose with charming promptness to 



THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN. 21 

anything resembling a fly which I tossed upon 
the surface of the foam. 

As I neared the heart of the mountain I saw, 
towering above twin cascades which fell into a 
single pool at its feet, the rough likeness of a 
sphinx. It was a huge boulder, dividing the 
torrent by its lichen-covered mass, and lifting 
its frost-hewn face towards the narrow strip of 
sky left between the trees overarching the ravine. 

Close above the sphinx a spring in the eastern 
bank filled a hollow in the hill with cold, fern- 
decked mud. A flower I never should have 
sought in this lofty nook had taken possession 
of the spot and raised hundreds of its white 
spikes towards the sky. It was a white orchis, 
Habenaria dilatata. In a space six feet by 
ten, I counted seventy -five of its plants, each in 
full bloom. On the edges of this miniature 
swamp the leaves of the mayflower mingled with 
those of the linnaea. The blossoms of the may- 
flowers were dry and brown ; those of the lin- 
nsea, with one fragrant exception, had fallen. 
Close by, the open-eyed flowers of the oxalis 
smiled from their beds of clover-shaped leaves. 

A few rods farther up the stream, the land 
grew steeper and the walls of the ravine drew 
more closely together. Taller trees presided 
over the torrent, and the water struggled down- 
ward between larger boulders. A stream, turn- 



22 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

bling down its narrow bed, came from the high 
eastern ledges and met that which ponred from 
the heights on the west. Here, in the perpetual 
music of falling drops, where one or another of 
the great walls of the gorge always casts a deep 
shadow upon the ferns, is the heart of the moun- 
tain, the birthplace of the twilight. 

Early in the afternoon I followed the western 
stream to its source, where, in a dark hollow at 
the head of the west ridge, hidden wholly from 
view by the forest, lies a small mountain lake. 
Perhaps it would be more truthful to call it a 
large pool, fed as it is mainly by melting snow 
or the streams of rain-water poured into it from 
the crags of Chocorua. Beneath its shallow 
water the maroon and dark green sphagnum 
formed a submerged carpet of intense colors. 
The growing tops of the moss, star-shaped and 
erect, glowed with the tint of life. The borders 
of the pool were fringed with dense growths 
of yellow - green Osmunda regalis which were 
swayed by a sweet wind. Through the soft foli- 
age of the deciduous trees surrounding the pool, 
lance-shaped spruces and balsams pierced a way 
for themselves towards the sky. No fish were 
visible in the pool, and its only living tenants 
seemed to be some tadpoles about the size of 
squash-seeds. Now that the noises of the brook 
no longer overwhelmed every other sound, the 









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24 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

attack. I had climbed upon the shoulders of 
the mountain, but its proud head, held high, 
was still out of reach. 

The thrush was one which is common upon 
the upper slopes of the mountains, wholly re- 
placing the veery there and probably outnum- 
bering the hermit. Its song, while pleasing, is 
not as musically beautiful as that of the hermit, 
nor yet as unique as the veery's. The hermit 
has three distinct phrases, the veery one, and 
Swainson's several which are not distinct, but 
rather jumbling reproductions of the same notes. 
If this bird had learned his song for himself, I 
should surmise that he had listened closely to a 
veery and a thrasher, and then tried to model a 
combination of their notes upon the lines of the 
hermit's exquisite song. Perhaps it was the 
heat and the glare of light on the ledges, or 
perhaps it was a certain dullness in the Swain- 
son's song, at all events I wearied of it and 
sought a higher ledge beyond the pool. 

On this higher ledge, lambkill (Kalmia an- 
gustifolia) was blooming in great abundance. 
It is a handsome flower, and it goes a little way 
to console us for not having mountain laurel. 
Between two great patches of lambkill and 
flowering diervilla was a level strip of gravel. 
It bore printed on its face an interesting his- 
tory. Beginning near the edge of a thicket 



THE HEART OF TEE MOUNTAIN. 25 

and extending to the edge of the cliff, where a 
view of miles of surrounding country could be 
obtained, was a line of sharp hoof-marks. A 
deer had walked slowly to the verge of the 
ledge, presumably to survey the landscape. 
The track had been made since the rain of the 
day before, and, for all that I could see, might 
have been made within an hour. While study- 
ing it I heard an unfamiliar bird-song remind- 
ing me slightly of the Maryland yellow-throat's. 
The bird was in the thicket. I crept towards 
him, but he retreated, singing at intervals. 
After following for some time, I tried working 
on his sympathies, and "squeaked" like a bird 
in distress. Instantly a flash of vivid yellow 
came through the trees and a magnificent male 
magnolia or black and yellow warbler appeared 
in search of the supposed sufferer. His mate 
soon joined him, as did a junco and two white- 
throated sparrows. The coloring of the mag- 
nolias is certainly gay. It includes blue-gray 
on the head, black on the back, canary-yellow 
beneath and on the rump, with white and dark 
bars, stripes, and spots enough on various parts 
of his body to make him as variegated as a har- 
lequin. 

While the magnolia warblers are members of 
the Canadian fauna, and seldom seen in the 
breeding season south of the White Mountains, 



26 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

the bird which I next heard singing was even 
more interesting. It was a male blackpoll 
warbler, perched upon the highest plume of a 
spruce and pouring out his unmusical ze-ze-ze- 
ze-ze with all a lover's earnestness. He clearly 
considered two thousand feet rise on Chocorua 
equivalent to several hundred miles' flight 
towards Labrador. In this the flowers sus- 
tained him, for growing near by was the charm- 
ing Arenaria grcenlandica, with its cluster of 
delicate white flowers springing from the sand, 
and the Potentilla tridentata blooming freely. 
Apparently dissenting from this boreal majority 
was a bunch of goldenrod in full bloom. It 
was a mountain species which comes into flower 
a fortnight or more earlier than its lowland rel- 
atives. 

My homeward path followed the crest of the 
great eastern ridge of Chocorua as it descends 
towards the basin of Chocorua ponds. The 
ridge is narrow and mainly open, save for a few 
stunted spruces. In every direction far-reach- 
ing and beautiful views charmed me and 
tempted me to linger. From the last of the 
open ledges, the top of what is called Bald 
Mountain, I saw the sun set just behind the 
peak. Then with quickened pace I entered the 
forest and ran through the gathering gloom 
down the rough path to the pastures a mile be- 
low. 



A LONELY LAKE. 

Six witheringly hot days had been followed 
by one so cool and clear, so full of rushing 
Arctic air, that all nature sparkled as on an 
autumn morning. About sunset on the evening 
of this cool day, — July 17, — the pale blue 
sky in the north was suddenly barred by ascend- 
ing rays of quivering white light. Choeorua, 
lying dark and still against the cold sky, seemed 
to be the centre of the aurora. As it grew 
dark I watched to see the heavens glow with the 
electric flame, but hour after hour passed with 
only an occasional gleam of light. Shortly be- 
fore sunrise, however, the promised illumination 
came. I awoke to find my chamber as bright 
as though day had come, for from the southeast 
moonlight streamed across the floor, while from 
the north the glow of the aurora flooded the 
room. An immense arch of throbbing white 
light crowned the northern sky, and within it a 
smaller coronet rested above the inky blackness 
of Choeorua. Between the two hung 1 the Great 
Dipper, and from one to the other occasional 
pulsating rays passed. The eastern end of the 



28 AT THE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

upper and larger belt of light made a sharp 
bend inward a few degrees above the horizon, 
and to a less defined extent the smaller arch 
was similarly shaped. The effect of this curve 
at the base of the two bows was very remarka- 
ble, for it destroyed the image of an arch and 
created the impression that one was looking into 
the inner curve of a ring which surrounded the 
earth, just as the rings of Saturn encircle that 
planet. Gradually the lower ring faded, the 
upper one settled down closer and closer to 
Chocorua; masses of electric energy seemed to 
dart across the eastern sky, where Sirius and 
the fair Pleiades gleamed, to the moon and 
Mars sailing serenely on their westward way. 
Behind Pequawket the lowest line of sky grew 
white. The dawn was coming, and, as though 
to avoid it, the hurrying beams and flashing 
waves of aurora moved faster and faster until in 
their dimness they could scarce be seen. Snowy 
.mists raised their phantom forms from the lake 
and floated eastward to meet the sun. A whip- 
poorwill sang his last song to the night, and as 
the glow of day grew more real a hermit thrush 
told in its heartfelt music the joy of life at the 
birth of a new period of labor. 

A scrap of mist which trailed over the forest 
Just at the foot of one of the ridges of Chocorua 
was the spirit of a lonely lake rising to do hom- 



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CHOCORUA FROM HERON POND 



A LOXELY LAKE. 29 

age to the day-star. This lake is a rendezvous 
for all that is wildest and freest in the animal 
life of the region. It is sufficient unto itself, 
and yields no tribute save to its lord the sun. 
Around it, high glacial walls stand, crowned 
with ancient oaks and graceful birches. No 
stream flows from it, or into it, unless threads 
of ice-cold water coming from springs in its 
banks are called streams. Its waters are deep, 
the fisherman, so they say, finding places in its 
centre where long lines reach no bottom. Seen 
from the peak of Chocorua, this lake, even in 
November, is as green as an emerald, and when 
one floats upon its surface and gazes far down 
into its depths, rich green water-weeds are seen 
stretching their tremulous fingers towards him, 
and crowding each other for standing-room on 
its muddy floor. 

Many are the days I have spent at this lonely 
lake learning the secrets of its tenants, and this 
morning, soon after the auroral beauties had 
faded from the sky, I came to it while the dew 
sparkled on the ferns. Drifting with the wind 
on the water, or stretched on the soft mosses 
which flourish under the birches, I stayed by 
the lake until evening. If an observer keeps 
still, it matters little whether he sits hidden 
under the spreading branches of a great oak on 
the shore, or lies upon a raft anchored in the 



30 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

lake, he is sure to see something interesting in 
either case. One morning, as I leaned against 
the oak's wide trunk, watching a bittern on the 
opposite shore, I noticed that the bird showed 
signs of uneasiness, paying more heed to the 
bushes than to its fishing. Suddenly the cause 
of its unrest became apparent. The bushes 
just behind it were slowly poked apart and the 
head of a fox appeared. With a guttural note 
of alarm the bittern rose and flew across the 
lake, above the trees on the opposite bank, and 
out of sight. Reynard, graceful and alert, 
stood upon the mossy shore for a moment, look- 
ing after his lost opportunity; then turned 
abruptly and vanished in the underbrush. An- 
other morning, while I was under the same 
tree, a big blue heron came softly stepping 
along the beach towards me. He was a comical 
figure, with his attenuated legs, wasted to the 
semblance of rushes ; his extensible neck, expres- 
sive of centuries of hungry reaching after the 
partly attainable ; and his long beak as cruel as 
a pair of shears. His dull eyes told of terror 
when he saw me. For a moment I felt their 
worried glare, and then the quaint machinery 
of the bird was put in motion and he flapped 
off out of sight. 

One still, cloudy afternoon in August, I lay 
upon a raft of weather-beaten logs and mossy 



A LONELY LAKE. 31 

boards, watching the fitful sky and listening to 
an occasional bird-note, when suddenly my eyes 
were drawn to the north shore of the lake by 
seeing a branch of green leaves swimming, ap- 
parently unaided, along the surface of the 
water. After progressing for forty or fifty feet 
it disappeared under the ripples. A mystery, 
truly. A few moments later a muskrat's head 
rose above the water, and the creature swam 
back to the point from which the leaves had 
started. Leaving the lake cautiously, the rat 
crawled clumsily up the bank into the bushes. 
After a minute or two it came waddling out 
bearing a second branch of ash, and this, too, 
floated along the placid surface of the lake until 
abruptly drawn down into the rat's burrow in 
the submerged bank. Later in the afternoon I 
noticed a V-shaped ripple plowing across the 
lake from the southern shore. On it came, a 
small, dark object being at its point, parting 
the water steadily. As it drew near the raft I 
saw that the dark spot was the head of another 
muskrat, whose course was shaped straight for 
the hole into which his mate had been carrying 
ash branches. He passed quite close to me 
without alarm, and a minute or two later the 
ripple ceased as the rat sank below the water a 
few yards from the mouth of the hole. 

The same still, cloudy day, a brownish black 



32 AT THE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

creature appeared on the southern shore of the 
lake and ambled along the edge of the water. 
At first glance it looked like a black kitten, but 
a plainer view showed it to be twice the length 
of a kitten, although no larger round than a 
man's wrist. Its progress at times was almost 
snake-like, so undulatory was it. Its head and 
fore-quarters would be gliding down one side of 
a log before its black tail and hind feet had 
quite reached the log on the other side. The 
edge of the pond was lined with tadpoles cling- 
ing to logs and stones, with their heads towards 
the shore. The black creature seemed to be 
attempting to catch these fish -like batrachians, 
for every few yards he pounced at something, 
and, if successful, cantered out of sight, into 
the weeds and bushes, where he remained un- 
til, so I surmised, he had eaten his adolescent 
frog. Although the raft was only about a hun- 
dred feet from the western shore of the pond, 
the mink kept his course past me, apparently 
without a thought of anything beyond the wary 
polywogs. He went as far as the mouth of the 
muskrat hole and then turned and retraced his 
cantering until I lost sight of him on the farther 
southern shore. Several times, in his eagerness 
to catch a tadpole, he plunged wholly beneath 
the water and pursued his prey as though he 
had been a pickerel. 



A LONELY LAKE. 33 

At the northeastern corner of the lake there 
is a grove of oaks, the largest of which doubt- 
less stood there before this part of New England 
was settled by white men. Squirrels hold this 
grove as frisky tenants-in-common with wood- 
chucks and raccoons; a family of porcupines 
having a right of way across it by virtue of un- 
opposed use running back till the memory of 
rodents knoweth nothing to the contrary. I 
have never been so fortunate as to find 'coons in 
the grove, although some of my household have 
found them, but I have seen their footprints in 
the April snow. They are strange footprints, 
which one can never mistake for any other. If 
the dearest, plumpest baby in New England 
patted the soft snow with its dimpled hands, it 
could not make daintier images of its little 
palms than this wild creature of the forest 
makes with its feet, as it hurries over the new- 
fallen snow. The most conspicuous squirrels 
by the pond are the great bushy-tailed grays ; 
the most retiring are the refined little flying- 
squirrels, which live in a deserted woodpecker's 
hole in a dead tree. The grays climb after* 
acorns to the highest limbs and branchlets of 
the oaks, frequently breaking off: leafy twigs, 
and dropping acorns to the ground. Below, 
watching for and improving their opportunities, 
are striped chipmunks, which gather up a por- 



34 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

tion of the harvest and conceal it in their bur- 
rows. Chickaree, too, is there, nervous, petu- 
lant, and noisy, but he is more likely to be 
found in the pines, or near the butternuts. In 
winter, especially, the pine woods are alive with 
red squirrels. I recall seeing twenty red squir- 
rels in a single midwinter day. Chipmunks 
may be seen late in December, and by the end 
of February, if it is warm, and the mouths of 
their holes are not covered by snow, they are 
ready to take a peep at the sky. They store 
enormous quantities of food, and the heat and 
moisture of their nests is such that they can eat 
corn sprouts and acorn shoots in midwinter 
while poor Chickaree is scratching about in the 
cold snow for an unnibbled pine cone. The 
gray squirrels are fond of the high-bush blue- 
berries, which grow in abundance on the mar- 
gins of the pond. They come down from the 
oaks to the great fallen trees lying half on the 
shore and half in the lake, and bask in the sun- 
light, drink of the water, and run up and down 
the logs with tails arched and waving behind 
them. 

The home of the porcupines is west of the 
pond on the slope of a heavily wooded hill, the 
sides of which are encumbered by very large 
boulders. Beneath one of the largest of these 
boulders and overhung by one almost as large, 



A LONELY LAKE. 35 

which rests against its mate, is the porcupines' 
den. By lying down between the rocks and 
crawling forward into the mouth of the den I 
can see several feet into its black interior. A 
passage large enough for a hound to squeeze 
through leads out of sight below the rocks. 
Quills and hairs line the ground, and other 
marks of long occupancy are abundant. I have 
been told by farmers that they had killed old 
" hedgehogs " weighing nearly fifty pounds. 
Tales are told of white porcupines, and it is 
impossible to shake the hunter's belief in the 
brutes' power to shoot their quills at their 
enemies. 

The skunk is a well-known character at the 
pond, but I have not sought her society, and it 
is an open question whether she lives in a de- 
serted woodchuck hole or among the boulders 
on the porcupine's hill. 

So far as I know, Bruin never comes to my 
pond. He lives within sight of it among the 
oaks and blueberry patches on the ledges of 
Chocorua, and if his small eyes ever scan the 
landscape from the cliffs above the heart of the 
mountain, he can see its emerald water gleam- 
ing in the sunlight. I am more than willing 
not to find his huge footprints on my mosses. 
Deer, on the other hand, go freely and fre- 
quently to the pond, and in May and June 
come to the garden patch below my cottage. 



36 AT THE NORTE OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

Wings even more than feet bring wild life to 
the lonely lake. The first time that I ever saw 
the waters of the pond flashing and rippling in 
the sunlight, wings awoke the echoes of the 
basin as a flock of black ducks rose at my com- 
ing and vanished behind the oaks. Wood ducks 
nested for years in a hollow oak by the shore. 
One bright October morning a black tern, borne 
by storm or waywardness of wing, came to the 
lake with five black ducks. That tiny mirror 
in the deep woods seemed to please the weary 
sea-bird, for it rested there many hours, and 
even when alarmed circled for a while in the 
sky and then returned to the spot where Choco- 
rua's horn was reflected in the mountain pool. 
The great numbers of tadpoles and frogs always 
to be found in the lake attract not only the 
great blue heron and the bitterns, but also the 
night herons, which sometimes come in flocks of 
eight or ten to fish in the lakes of this region. 
Early in August of each year a kingfisher ap- 
pears at the pond and passes much of his time 
by it. There are certain dry branches upon 
which he perches one after another in order, as 
lie circles round the pond uttering his harsh 
rattling cry. I suspect that fishing of the same 
kind goes on after dark, for the lake is a favor- 
ite resort of the barred owls, whose trumpet 
tones are heard nightly at certain seasons. 



A LONELY LAKE. 37 

More than once I have seen them on branches 
above the water, or floating on noiseless wino- 
from shore to shore. The fondness of this owl 
for frogs and fish is remarkable, particularly 
for hornpout, which aboimd in this lake. I have 
known my captive owls to strike a fish with their 
talons when it was several inches below the sur- 
face of the water in a tank. 

Many a time as I have been hidden by shel- 
tering boughs, scanning the lake and its shores 
for signs of life, I have seen a dark shadow 
glide across the water, and then a broad-winged 
bird alight noiselessly on a dead limb from 
which the whole surface of the lake could 
be seen. Its face would express cruelty and 
hunger, apprehension and something akin to 
remorse. The eyes of a hawk are fuD of mean- 
ing ; they tell the story of guilt and of the eter- 
nal misery of spirit which follows guilt. The 
hawks which come to my pond are of several 
species, including the slow buteos, which one 
sees circling by the hour in the high skies; the 
dangerous accipiters, so ruthless in their raids 
upon poultry and small birds; and the low- 
flying* graceful, mouse -hunting marsh hawk, 
readily to be known by its white rump. At 
evening the whippoorwills and their cousins the 
night-hawks frequent the lake. Just at twilight 
I have heard six whippoorwills at once singing 



38 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

their strange song on the edge of the water. 
Perhaps they come there to bathe ; at all events 
they sing only for a moment, after which only 
an occasional cluck or " whip " betrays their 
presence. Late in August the night-hawks fly 
in large companies, and as many as twenty-five 
have sometimes wheeled into the lake's basin 
and circled over it, to the consternation of the 
small frogs. 

Behind the great oaks, in which scarlet tana- 
gers breed, there is a level overgrown with gray 
birches. Nearly a dozen of these trees have 
been converted into drinking fountains by a 
family of sap-sucking woodpeckers, and through 
the summer days, as long as the sap is sweet and 
abundant, the indolent birds cling to the trunk, 
sip the tree's lifeblood as it drains away, and 
catch a few of the many insects which hover 
around the moist bark. The product of the 
trees is shared with several humming-birds, and 
the insects attract small flycatchers and war- 
blers. 

To tell of all the birds which either live near 
the lake or come to it more or less regularly, 
would be to recount the doings of most of the 
six-score species which are found in the Choco- 
rua country. The lake is not only a favorite 
place of resort for resident birds, but it is a 
section of one of those dimly recognizable 



A LONELY LAKE. 39 

"lines" of migration along which bands of 
spring and autumn birds seem by instinct to 
take their way year by year. On this "line," 
above the lake shore, I met my first and only 
Philadelphia vireo, one of the rarest of our 
migrants. 

The vegetation of the lake shore has a great 
deal to do with its power to attract animal and 
bird life. I know of some woods which are for- 
ever silent to bird voices, and in which the snows 
of winter seem untrodden by any foot save mine. 
The lake was once in the heart of a white pine 
forest. Scores of huge stumps show where the 
giant trees lived until a tornado overturned 
them. Now the canoe birch is the prevailing 
tree, and few creations of the New England soil 
can rival it in grace, beauty, and useful quali- 
ties. The forest's carpet of gray and green 
mosses, wintergreen, checkerberry, linnaea, 
dwarf cornel, asters and goldenrod, ferns and 
brakes, is strangely lacking in one flower gen- 
erally common to the region. I have searched 
for half a mile in every direction from the pond 
and failed to find more than one root of the may- 
flower. That root, with its three or four clusters 
of flowers, is well hidden in a deeply shaded and 
poorly watered spot, where its future is threat- 
ened by a lack of all the elements which make 
plant life prosperous. Near this solitary root 



40 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

of mayflower there grows an eccentric blueberry- 
bush, which bears pale pink and white berries 
very sweet to the taste, but which never grow 
blue. Here, too, is to be found the shy little 
snowberry, whose fruit has the art of hiding 
itself beneath glossy round leaves, so that close 
search is needed to gather it. Along the banks 
of the lake high-bush blueberries of fabulous 
size tempt the stroller from his course. Some 
of these berries were once mistaken for fox 
grapes. In the moist sand at the foot of these 
blueberry bushes, the modest houstonia blossoms 
throughout six consecutive months of the year. 
It comes in May, and it fades not until Novem- 
ber. The bunchberry retains its flowers in 
these groves until long after its berries are red 
elsewhere. Yet autumn flowers are not notice- 
ably slow in blooming by the lake. One of these 
autumn flowers is an interesting hybrid, so rec- 
ognized at the Gray Herbarium. For four 
years we have found several roots of a golden - 
rod which is neither the ccesia, which it closely 
resembled in form, nor the bicolor, from which 
it inherits its white ray flowers. Both of these 
familiar species grow near it, and are presum- 
ably its parents. 

Within the waters of the lake there is abun- 
dant life. Years ago it was a famous trout 
pond, stocked perhaps by the Indians, but the 




CAXOE BIRCHES OF THE BEARCAMP VALLEY 



A LONELY LAKE. 4£ 

malice of the white man spoiled it. A man who 
had a grudge against those who most enjoyed 
trout-fishing in the lake caught a pailful of horn- 
pout and turned them into the green waters. 
The}' multiplied, and now legions of them move 
their hideous bodies back and forth through the 
swaying weeds beneath its surface. They never 
grow large, but their numbers are appalling. 
Sometimes when, in a still summer evening, the 
surface of the lake is unruffled by wind, and 
myriads of small insects have fallen upon the 
water, the pout appear in countless multitudes, 
swimming so that their horns or tails show above 
the water. 

The tadpoles also are extraordinarily numer- 
ous at some seasons, and they, too, have a way 
of coming to the top of the water and contem- 
plating the upper world, to which they hope some 
day rightfully to attain. A sudden stamp of 
the foot upon the shore will cause hundreds of 
these floating polywogs to splash into foam the 
water over half the surface of the lake. The 
painted tortoise lives in the lake, but no other 
creature of his kind is found near it. In fact, 
I have never seen the spotted turtle in the Bear- 
camp valley. I once dug seventeen painted 
turtles out of one hole in the mud on the west- 
ern edge of the lake, where they had crowded 
for some reason of their own. 



42 AT THE NORTE OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

Of all the many creatures which frequent the 
lonely lake, the big blue heron seems to be the 
most in sympathy with its shy silence and lone- 
liness. He is its king, and by his name the lake 
is known. 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 

Of the many roads which start northward 
from Bearcamp Water, every one is either 
warded off by the Sandwich range into the Saco 
or into the Pemigewasset valley, or else smoth- 
ered in the dark forest-clad ravines between the 
mountain ridges. From Conway on the east to 
Campton and Thornton on the west, there is no 
rift in the mountain wall through which travel 
flows. There was a time, however, before the 
Civil War, when near the middle of the great 
barrier the human current found an outlet 
southward from the upper end of Swift River 
intervale to the Bearcamp Valley. Sitting by 
the fireside of a sturdy Albany farmer as the 
December moonlight gleamed upon the level 
snows of the intervale, I heard stories of the 
lumbermen's journeys through those dark and 
narrow passes. Great spars and masts, the 
farmer said, had been hauled out of the valley 
under the frowning cliffs of Paugus, and carried 
safely to the level fields of Sandwich. Then 
there arose a storm such as old men know but 
once in a lifetime, and the passes were filled 



44 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

with tangled masses of wrecked forest. All the 
axes in Albany and Tamworth could not have 
cut a way through the snarl without many weeks 
of exhausting labor. So at least thought the 
lumbermen who attempted to pass the abattis 
raised by the storm. Years elapsed and the 
road became only a matter of vague tradition. 
Those who climbed the peak of Passaconaway 
or the lofty ledges of Paugus saw below them a 
panorama of ruin. Bleached bones of the great 
spruce forest lay there piled in magnificent con- 
fusion. Over the debris, springing from its 
midst, a dense growth of mountain ash, wild 
cherry, and hobble-bush made the chaos more 
chaotic. No trace of the lost trail was visible 
even to the most fanciful eye. 

Between Paugus and Chocorua the hurricane 
had not done its worst work. There one could 
see four miles of narrow ravine reaching from 
the Tamworth fields directly northward to a 
steep ridge connecting Paugus with Chocorua 
at their northern slopes. On the other side of 
the barrier lay the Swift River intervale. If 
that ridge were out of the way, if it could be 
easily surmounted, or if a rift could be found 
in it, the journey of nearly thirty miles from 
the southern spurs of Paugus, round through 
Conway to the northern spurs, would be reduced 
to eight or nine miles. The people living at 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 45 

the upper end of Swift River valley, instead of 
having to travel sixteen miles to a post-office, 
doctor, minister, or store, could touch civiliza- 
tion by driving about eleven miles. 

At half past four on the morning of Satur- 
day, July 30, I drove rapidly away from my 
red-roofed cottage towards the southern foot of 
Paugus. Long days of parching heat had been 
brought to an end by a series of three heavy 
thunderstorms, which had drenched the country 
during the preceding evening. Nature had 
revived. The sky was bluer, the forest greener, 
the gold of the goldenrod more intense. Every 
particle of dust had been washed out of the air 
and off the many -tinted garments of the earth. 
For nearly a fortnight the mercury had been 
among the nineties as often as the clock struck 
noon. To face a cool breeze, to see everything 
sparkling with moisture, to have the air feel 
and appear thin and clear, was inspiring and 
exhilarating. To find the lost trail into the 
Swift River valley was now a matter of delight- 
ful interest. 

At the southern foot of Paugus is a ruined 
mill and an old lumber camp. A good road 
leads thither from the highway, and the house 
at the point where the lumber road begins is 
the home of Nat. Berry, farmer, lumberman, 
hunter, trapper, surveyor, carpenter, and pub- 



46 AT TEE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

lie-spirited citizen. I felt that if any man on 
the southern side of the mountains knew a way- 
through them, that man was Berry. Two years 
before, while wandering over the ridges of Cho- 
corua, I had been caught in one of Berry's forty- 
pound steel bear traps. The springs of the trap 
were weak and it was deeply buried in the moss, 
so that before its cruel jaws had closed firmly 
upon my ankle, I thrust the stock of my gun 
between them and withdrew my foot. Berry's 
greeting, as we drove up to his house, showed 
that he had not forgotten my adventure, for 
he shouted, "Come at last, have you, to let me 
cut off them ears? Can't c'lect my bounty on 
you without 'em." A few words told Berry of 
my errand, and he at once showed interest in 
the quest. 

"Thirty-seven year ago," he said, "when I 
was only twelve year old, a road was run 
through from this house to the back settlements. 
It was a winter road, but I recollect that a man 
and his wife drove over it in a pung. They 
went clean through. About fifteen year ago I 
went in where you are a-going, with a railroad 
surveyor, and he said there was only five hun- 
dred feet rising between here and the height of 
land. There used to be another road between 
Toadback and Passaconaway, but that 's all 
choked up now by the harricane. This road is 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 47 

between Toaclback and Coroway, and I know 
that four miles of it is about as good going now 
as ever it was." 

It required little urging to induce Berry to 
join us, and our horse's head was turned north- 
ward into the lumber road leading to the lost 
trail. As we drove away from fields, roads, 
and the surroundings of habitations, animal life 
grew less and less abundant, and plant life less 
varied. Around the farms robins, sparrows, 
and swallows are to be seen or heard at every 
hour in the day. Woodpeckers and chickadees 
abound in the orchards, and even hawks spend 
more time in sight of hen-yards than they do in 
the gloomy solitudes of the mountains. By the 
roadside goldenrod was in its glory, while St. 
John's-wort was growing rusty. The pink of 
hardhack and thistles large and small, the yel- 
low of the mullein, the reds of flreweed, pas- 
ture lily, and the sumac fruit, the purple of 
vervain, early asters, and the persistent brunella, 
and the white of the exquisite dalibarda, of 
immortelles, arrowhead, and the graceful spiran- 
thes in turn caught the eye as the wagon rolled 
by pasture and sandbank, meadow, copse, and 
swamp. 

From Berry's house we drove a long mile 
before the true primeval forest was reached. 
There, in a clearing of an acre or more, were 



48 AT THE NORTE OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

the ruins of a saw-mill, two or three slab houses, 
and a collapsed stable where the lumbermen's 
oxen had been kept in the winter nights, years 
ago. In the mill's time sawdust had covered 
everything; but now the strong, quarrelsome 
blackberry had mastered the sawdust. Our 
guide pointed to a break in the solid wall of 
woods surrounding the mill, so we struggled 
through the blackberry jungle and left the sun- 
light behind us. As we entered the forest, 
bird music ceased, few flowers decked the 
ground, — the pallid Indian pipe seeming more 
akin to the fungi than to flowers, — and not a 
squirrel disturbed the quiet of the endless aisles. 
Here and there small brightly colored toadstools 
and the fruit of bunchberry or clintonia lent 
a bit of vermilion, orange, yellow, or lustrous 
metallic blue to the dull brown carpet of the 
woods; or a branch of maple, prematurely 
robbed of its chlorophyll, gleamed in the far-off 
sunlight among the tree-tops. If by chance the 
eye caught a glimpse of the flowers of the rattle- 
snake plantain, or of some of the greenish wood 
orchids, it found in them less color than in the 
toadstools and less perfume than in the needles 
of the balsam. 

There extended before us a clearly marked 
passageway between the giant trunks of ancient 
trees. It was the beginning of the old trail. 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 49 

Stout young saplings had grown up within it, 
and the long interlacing stems of the hobble- 
bush, or "tangle-foot" as Berry called it, con- 
cealed its many inequalities. We proceeded 
slowly, cutting away bushes as we went, and 
the horse followed with the wagon, which rose 
and fell over logs and boulders as though tossed 
on the waves of the sea. At the end of half a 
mile, we decided to leave the horse with all of 
our impedimenta except axes and luncheon. A 
space was accordingly cleared, and Kitty, tied 
to a large tree, was fenced in on two sides to 
prevent her from walking around the tree, and 
so choking herself. 

The trees which formed the forest were of 
many kinds, making it much more interesting 
than the monotonous spruce growth of the 
higher slopes. Those which were to all appear- 
ance the oldest were the yellow birches, hun- 
dreds of them having trunks over ten feet in 
circumference at a point two feet from the 
ground. Some of the giant hemlocks were 
larger, but they are, I believe, trees of more 
rapid growth than the yellow birch and so prob- 
ably less venerable. There was a large repre- 
sentation of ancient beech-trees with trunks 
which looked as hard as granite, yet which made 
me think of wrestlers with swollen muscles 
strained and knotted under the tightly drawn 



50 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

skin. Some of the beeches seemed to have be- 
gun life in mid-air, for their trunks rested upon 
tripods or polypods of naked and spreading 
roots, which held them two or even three feet 
from the surface of the soil. In other cases 
these polypods clasped great boulders in their 
unyielding embrace, showing that the beech in 
its infancy had taken root upon the top of the 
rock, and year by year extended its thirsty ten- 
tacles lower and lower down the sides of its 
mossy foundation until the soil was reached. 
Then the hungry sapling, fed for so long on 
meagre supplies of food and water, must have 
expanded with sudden vigor, while its roots 
grew strong and gripped the rock in tighter and 
tighter embrace. The only way of accounting 
for the empty polypods seemed to be to suppose 
the trees to have sprouted upon stumps prone 
to decay, or upon rocks capable of rapid disin- 
tegration. Many of the glimpses through these 
be*ech woods reminded me of the grotesque for- 
est pictures which are produced so frequently 
in German woodcuts. 

Huge maples, with bark resembling that of 
ancient oaks, formed an important part of the 
forest, and so did canoe birches of various ages, 
solitary white pines of immense height, and old- 
growth spruces, the last named becoming more 
and more numerous as our road gained higher 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 51 

levels. Dozens of these trees had been struck 
by lightning and more or less injured. One 
had been completely shattered and surrounded 
by a spiral abattis of huge splinters stuck firmly 
into the ground. 

The twilight and silence of the forest made 
it restful at first, but as the day wore on, rare 
glimpses of distance and of sunlight were as 
welcome to us as to men confined between 
prison walls. 

We had gone rather more than three miles 
from Berry's house when our guide paused and 
said: "There, the old road is missing for a 
piece beyond this, and the best we can do is to 
head north and spot the trees as we go." 

To that point there had been evident, to eyes 
accustomed to forest travel, a difference be- 
tween the continuity of large timber and the 
strip once cleared of this timber in order to 
form the road. Looking back, we could see the 
passage; looking forward, there seemed to be 
no trace of it. The greater part of Paugus had 
been passed on our left, and on our right the 
peak of Chocorua, which at Berry's had been 
northeast, was now a little south of east from 
us. Before us the valley narrowed somewhat, 
and far ahead a continuation of the ridge of 
Paugus seemed to cross the northern sty line 
and approach the northern spurs of Chocorua. 



52 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Blazing the trees as we walked by them, both 
on our left and on our right, on the south side 
of the trunks and on their north sides also, we 
pushed forward due north. Ever since leaving 
the ruined mill our way had lain close to the 
foot of Paugus, the width of the valley being 
between us and the foot of Chocorua. Nearly 
a mile was traversed before we touched the wall 
of Paugus barring the north and forcing us to 
bend eastward. Entering a narrow ravine, 
none too wide for a single road at its bottom, 
we came once more upon the lost trail. Marks 
of the axe were frequent, but the great hem- 
locks which it had felled were mere moss-covered 
pulp, and from their stumps viburnum or young 
trees had sprouted. Berry found spots on the 
trees which he remembered to have made when 
he guided the engineer through the pass fifteen 
years before. The walls of the ravine grew 
steeper, and across it fallen trees occasionally 
blocked the way. Presently it bent sharply to 
the left, so that we were once more headed 
northward, and then it widened into an amphi- 
theatre half a mile in width, wholly surrounded 
by steep and rocky sides. The old trail was 
again lost, and Berry declared that out of this 
pocket there was no outlet save over the tower- 
ing ridge at the north. The story of the man 
and woman in a sleigh, who had once crossed 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 53 

this frowning barrier, alone sustained our hopes 
of finding a pass which could be opened to 
wheels. 

My watch said that it was 10.30 a. m. As 
we had begun our first meal at four a. m., a 
second one seemed appropriate; so in the face 
of our frowning crisis we lay upon the moss 
and made way with the larger part of our knap- 
sack's contents. A red squirrel, inquisitive, 
petulant Chickaree, came down from the ridge 
and chattered to us. Far above in the tree- 
tops two birds called loudly to each other. 
Their notes were new to me, and so shy were 
they that I secured only a distant glimpse of 
them through my glass. They seemed to prefer 
the highest tips of dead trees, from which they 
darted now and then into the air after insects. 
It did not require much knowledge of birds to 
assign this noisy couple to the family of the 
tyrant flycatchers, and their size was so great as 
to make them one of three species, — kingbirds, 
great crested flycatchers, or olive-sided flycatch- 
ers. As I knew the first two well, from daily 
chances to watch their habits, I felt practically 
certain that these keepers of the pass were the 
wild, wayward, and noisy olive-sided flycatchers 
of which I had heard so often, but never before 
met on their breeding-grounds. Luncheon over, 
we faced the barrier, and, selecting a shallow 



54 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

ravine in its side, began the ascent. While 
struggling over huge boulders and winding 
around fallen trees we did not feel as though 
wheels were ever likely to go where legs were 
having so hard a time. Still the ascent was 
made in less than ten minutes, and to a practi- 
cal road-builder the slope, cleared of its surface 
debris, would present few serious obstacles. 

On reaching the top we gained a view of the 
peak of Chocorua well to the south of east, and 
of the ramparts of Paugus, half spruce hung 
and half bald rock, bounding the long valley 
through which our morning tramp had taken 
us. The peak of Chocorua had lost its horn- 
like contour and resembled more a combing 
wave dashing northward. It was the only part 
of the mountain proper to be seen, as in the 
foreground a massive spur projecting northwest- 
ward completely concealed the principal mass. 
Looking towards the north, the prospect was 
disheartening. The ridge on which we stood 
had been a battleground of the elements. It 
was, in the language of this region, a "harri- 
cane," and woe to the man who ventures into a 
''harricane." We advanced cautiously, choos- 
ing our ground, and cutting a narrow path 
through the small spruces, cherry saplings, and 
mountain maples which had overgrown the 
fallen forest. Every few steps we came upon 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 55 

stumps which bore the axe mark instead of that 
of the storm. We surmised that we had struck 
a belt which had been "lumbered" before the 
hurricane had completed its destruction. Fight- 
ing on yard by yard, we crossed the top of the 
ridge and gained its northern edge. There the 
signs of timber cutting were plainer, and pres- 
ently I noticed a curious ribbon of saplings 
reaching down the slope in front of us. The 
young trees in it were higher than the wreck on 
each side of it, yet the ribbon was the road and 
the wreck was all that remained of the forest 
through which the road had been cut long years 
aero. The broken thread of the lost trail had 
been found. Behind us a blazed path reached 
into the Bearcamp valley ; before us the lumber 
road wound downward a short two miles to the 
Swift River road, now plainly visible over the 
sloping tree-tops. 

We followed the lumber road down about a 
mile, searching for a hut which Berry remem- 
bered to have seen. As we descended, the 
"harricane" was left behind, and our ribbon of 
saplings led into the forest, its massed stems 
contrasting oddly with the wide-spaced trunks 
of the primeval growth. Coming to the hut, 
which Berry said had been built twenty years 
before, we found it remarkably well preserved. 
Straw still remained in the lumbermen's bunks, 



56 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

pieces of the stove lay on the floor, and although 
the roof had been sprung by snow resting heav- 
ily upon it, the hut was as dry and habitable as 
ever. It even retained the "stuffy" smell of a 
dirty and ill-ventilated house. It was inhabited, 
too, not by men, but by hedgehogs, as the Amer- 
ican porcupine is universally called in New 
Hampshire. They had been under it, through 
it, and over it. Every piece of stair, joist, or 
floor, upon which salt or grease had fallen, had 
been gnawed away by them. They had slept in 
the bunks both upstairs and down, and the stairs 
bore traces of their constant use. 

In front of the hut stood a watering-trough. 
It was a huge log hollowed by the axe into two 
tanks, a small one at the upper end for man's 
use, and a larger one below for the cattle. 
Small logs had been neatly grooved as spouts to 
lead the water from the brook to the trough. 
Moss grew upon them now and the summer sun- 
light shone upon them, but it was easy to ima- 
gine the snow piled high upon the hills, smother- 
ing the brooks and burying the rough spouts, 
and to fancy that over the trampled snow the 
woolly and steaming oxen came to drink of the 
water, while a sturdy French Canadian broke 
the ice with his axe and drank at the spot where 
from under the snow the spouts led the water 
into his end of the dugout. The cattle are dead, 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 57 

the axe has rusted, the Canadian has been killed 
in a brawl, or has gone back to his River St. 
Lawrence to spend his old age under the shadow 
of the cross, but the brook still murmurs over 
its pebbles, and when snow falls by the trough 
and the hut it is cleaner and purer than the 
foot of the lumberman left it. 

Woe to the man who ventures into a "harri- 
cane"! Not content with the road which we 
had made and found over the ridge, we sought, 
as we turned homewards, to see whether another 
lumber road, which came into ours from the 
southeast, did not cross the ridge by an easier 
grade. Following it upward higher and higher, 
we came at last to an open ledge from which 
a beautiful view was gained. Northward of us 
frowned Bear Mountain, dark in its spruces. 
To its left were Lowell, Nancy, Anderson, and 
the rest of the proud retinue of Carrigain. 
Deep shadows lay in Carrigain Notch. Bluer 
and fairer, higher and more distant, the heads 
of Bond, Willey, and the Franconia Mountains 
rested against the sky. To the westward, above 
the long rampart of Paugus with its flat, gray 
cliffs capped by black spruce, towered the cone 
of Passaconaway, wooded to its very tip. South- 
ward, just across a deep ravine and behind a 
heavily timbered spur, was Chocorua, its great 
tooth cutting into the blue heavens. Though we 



58 AT TEE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

enjoyed the picture of the distance, we were filled 
with something like despair at the foreground. 
On three sides of us the "harricane" extended 
as far as the nature of the ground permitted us 
to see. Westward, along the ridge, in the direc- 
tion in which lay our trail of the morning, it 
reached for half a mile at least, and through it 
we must go, unless, indeed, we preferred to re- 
trace our steps into the Swift River valley and 
regain our path by such an ignominious circuit. 
Seen from above, that half-mile of forest wreck 
looked like a jack-straw table of the gods. 
Thousands of trees, averaging sixty or seventy 
feet in height, had been uprooted and flung to- 
gether "every which way." They were flat upon 
the ground, piled in parallel lines, crossed at 
right angles, head to head, root to root, twisted 
as though by a whirlwind, or matted together as 
they might have been had a sea of water swept 
them from hill-crest to valley. Boulders of 
various sizes lay under the wreck, and, to make 
its confusion more distracting, saplings, briers, 
and vines flourished upon the ground shaded 
and enriched by the wasting ruin. 

It took more than an hour to climb and tum- 
ble over half a mile of this tangle. Any one 
who has watched an ant laboriously traversing 
a stubble-field or a handful of hay, crawling 
along one straw, across some, under others, and 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 59 

anon climbing to a height to consult the dis- 
tance, will know how we made our journey. 
Men go through great battles without a scratch, 
but they could not penetrate a "harricane " with 
any such fortunate results. 

The spots on our blazed trees seemed as 
friendly as home on a winter's night, when at 
last we reached them and began the southward 
march. As we had been two hours without 
water, the first brook drew us to its side and 
held us entranced by its tiny cascades. In the 
pool from which I drank, half a dozen caddis- 
worm cases lay upon the sand at the bottom. 
They were sand, yet not of the sand, for mind 
had rescued them from the monotony of their 
matter and made them significant of life. They 
had faithfully guarded their little builders while 
dormant, and now those awakened tenants had 
risen from the water, dried their gauzy wings 
in the sun and vanished in airy wanderings. 
Near the brook lay a dead tree, and upon it were 
fastened a number of brightly colored fungi. 
Their lower surfaces and margins were creamy 
white, then a band of orange vermilion passed 
around them, while the upper and principal part 
was greenish gray marked with dark brown 
wavelike lines. They reminded me, by their 
color and surface, of the tinted clay images or 
costume figures which are made by peasants in 



60 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

several parts of southern Europe, and in Japan. 
Anything more in contrast with the gloom of 
a northern forest would be hard to discover. 
Much of the ground near the brook was covered 
by yew bushes, on which, brilliant as jewels, 
gleamed their pendent and slightly attached red 
berries. The mosses and lichens were the glory 
of the wood. Never parched by thirst in these 
perpetual shades, they grew luxuriantly on 
boulders, fallen logs, standing trees, the faces 
of ledges, and over the moist brook banks and 
beds of leaf mould. What the great forest was 
to us, that the mosses must be to the minute 
insects which live among them. 

So thoroughly had we spotted the trees in the 
morning, that as we followed our trail back 
there was not a moment when our eyes hesitated 
as to the direction of the path. 

Four days passed, and on the morning of the 
fifth a gay column wound its way through the 
forest following the regained trail. Nearly a 
score of axes, hatchets, and savage machettas 
resounded upon the trees and shrubs which en- 
croached upon the road. Behind the axemen 
came several horses, each bearing a rider as 
courageous as she was fair. If branches 
menaced the comfort of these riders, they were 
speedily hewn away; if the hobble-bush hid 



FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 61 

hollows or boulders in the road, it was cut off at 
the root ; if a ford or a bog offered uncertain 
footing to the snorting horses, strong hands 
grasped their bridles and they were led through 
to surer ground. When the difficulties of the 
road became serious, the horses were left behind 
and the column pressed forward on foot. The 
ridge was met and stormed, the "harricane" 
was safely pierced, the hedgehog's hut was vis- 
ited and passed, and the old lumber road was 
followed swiftly down to the grass-land and 
highway of the Albany intervale. If one wo- 
man in days long past had traversed the winter 
road in a sleigh, others of her sex had now over- 
come greater difficulties and broken the stub- 
born barrier of the Sandwich range. 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOCORUA. 

The 10th of August ranked, by the family 
thermometer, as next to the hottest clay of the 
summer. It was a marked day in my calendar, 
— marked long in advance for a night alone on 
the narrow rock which forms the tip of Choco- 
rua's peak. It was chosen on account of the 
display of meteors which, in case of a clear sky, 
always makes that night attractive for a vigil. 
On August 10, 1891, I counted two hundred 
and fifty meteors between sunset and eleven 
o'clock p. M. As I watched the sky, and sav> 
the great rock of the peak rising sharply into 
it, I determined that another year I would 
count my meteors from its summit, and not from 
the common level of a field. 

By four o'clock in the afternoon a breeze had 
drifted down to us from the mountains, and be- 
hind them cloud-heads were rising in the north- 
west. Fanned by the breeze and undaunted by 
clouds, I began the ascent of Chocorua by the 
Hammond path. In the woods the breeze was 
stifled by the trees, and I was stifled by the still 
heat which oppressed all nature. For three 



A NIGHT ALONE ON C1J0C0RUA. 63 

miles the only bird I heard was a red -eyed 
vireo, and the only one I saw was a grouse 
which flew from the path. In the road below 
and along the trail up the mountain there were 
dozens of young toads. They were about the 
size of the Indian's head on a cent. I won- 
dered how far up the trail I should find them, 
so I watched closely as the path grew steeper 
and steeper. The last one seen was about six- 
teen hundred feet above the sea, and one thou- 
sand feet above the Hammond clearing where I 
first noticed them. There is no still water 
within a mile of the point where I found the 
last one. In view of such facts, it is not diffi- 
cult to account for the popular belief that young 
toads fall from the clouds with rain. 

Clearing the forest, and reaching the open 
ledges on the crest of the great southeastern 
ridge of Chocorua, along which the Hammond 
path runs towards the peak, I saw that a storm 
was gathering in the west. Piles of thunder- 
heads were rolling up beyond Whiteface and 
the Sandwich Dome, and tending northward. 
Chocorua might be too far east to be included 
in the drenching which was in store. It was 
not too far away to lose the cool wind which 
suddenly changed my gasping heat into a shiver. 
With a quicker pace I pushed towards the foot 
of the peak. 



64 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

All but one of the well-marked paths up 
Chocorua spend too much time in the ravines 
and woods. It is discouraging to toil mile 
after mile through uninteresting small growth, 
without a breath of cool air or a glimpse of dis- 
tance. The Hammond path cancels nearly half 
the height of the mountain in the first mile of 
woodland, and then rewards the climber by suc- 
cessive views which grow more charming as 
ledge after ledge is passed. While following 
the top of the slowly rising and scantily wooded 
ridge, the peak is seen coming nearer and nearer, 
and growing more and more impressive. Range 
after range of northern mountains rise above 
the foreground, and the far horizon widens 
slowly. When the foot of the peak is finally 
reached, shutting out for a time all that is 
grandest in the view, the climber feels that he 
must scale those forbidding cliffs, whatever be- 
comes of him when the final struggle is over. 
So I felt as, at about half past six, I gained the 
top of the mountain's shoulder and looked up at 
the huge rock which forms its awful head. The 
eastern side of the peak is so precipitous that 
few have the temerity even to try to scale it. 
The southern side is broken into smaller cliffs, 
between which tufts of spruces grow. In winter 
this face is quite readily climbed upon the packed 
snow, but in summer wide sloping ledges polished 




THE PEAK OF CHOCORUA FROM THE HAMMOND TRAIL 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CBOCORUA. 65 

by ice make the way difficult and dangerous to 
the novice. A few score rods to the west, yet 
still on the southern face of the peak, there is a 
rift in the cliffs filled with small trees and frasr- 

o 

inents of rock. This cleft leads straight up- 
wards to a small sandy plateau on the west side 
of the peak, two thirds of the way to its summit. 
As I struggled up this almost perpendicular ra- 
vine, I heard the steady roar of thunder, and 
saw above me black clouds surging across the 
sky. It woidd have been dark had not the 
south been filled with silvery light and hazy 
sunset glory. A black-mouthed cave upon my 
right offered a refuge. Hedgehogs lived in it, 
but its outer chamber would be storm-proof. 
Should I wait? No, storm or no storm, I would 
gain the peak, and do my part to keep my tryst 
with the stars. 

Stumbling out of the ravine upon the plateau, 
I faced the north. A picture was there which 
made the memory of Dore's strongest delinea- 
tions of Dante's visions seem weak. On my 
right was an upright wall of black rock, on my 
left an abyss. Northward, before me, lay that 
wilderness of forests and peaks which forms the 
White Mountains, thirty miles square of spruce 
forests, and all of it on edge, — a sierra forbid- 
ding at its best, but now made terrible by a 
tempest. The higher heavens were filled with 



66 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

loose, rounded black clouds with white spaces 
between them. Below them, impending over 
a belt of country about ten miles north of me, 
was a very long but narrow cloud, black as ink, 
with a clean-cut lower edge as straight as a level. 
From it forked lightning was playing downward. 
The outlines of the mountains were singularly 
clear. I could see, beginning at the right, the 
Presidential Range, the Crawford Notch, An- 
derson, Nancy, Lowell, the Carrigain Notch, 
Carrigain ; and then, partly obscured by rain, 
the Franconia Mountains and the nearer heights 
of Tripyramid and its neighbors. Just over 
Tripyramid, reaching nearly to the zenith, was 
an opening in the clouds, a narrow space be- 
tween two storms. It was clear gold within, 
but hideous black profiles were outlined against 
it, as though the fiends of one storm were look- 
ing across it at their allied hosts in the second 
bank of clouds now hurrying upward from the 
southwest. 

Turning sharply to the right, I found and 
climbed the rough path leading up the rocks to 
the highest point on the peak. Three thousand 
feet below me, in that peaceful valley hj the 
lake, was my home. I could just see its red 
roof among the trees. Wind ripples were chas- 
ing each other across the lake, marring its white 
surface. The lake is heart-shaped, and my cot- 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOCORUA. 67 

tage rests at the tip. No storm impended over 
those whom I had left behind, but the voice of 
the thunder reminded me of what was passing 
to the northward. 

Under the long level black cloud, from which 
zigzag lightning darted downward like a snake's 
tongue, were three zones of color. The first, 
nearest the east, and at the head of the storm as 
it moved forward, was gray. It was formed of 
scud. The second was black, and from it shot 
most of the lightning. The third was snowy- 
white shaded by perpendicular lines. This was 
the rain. Each belt seemed to be two miles or 
more in width, and the whole was moving about 
twenty miles an hour. When I reached the 
peak, Carrigain Notch was just passing under 
the scud, and as I watched, Lowell, Anderson, 
and Nancy were in turn obscured. By the time 
Mount Nancy was covered, Carrigain and its 
notch were reappearing. Meanwhile, the golden 
gap in the clouds had closed, and the second 
storm was approaching. Its course was such as 
to take in Chocorua, Paugus, and the Swift 
River intervale which lay just below me on the 
north. Wild as the first storm made the north- 
ern sky, the second one seemed bent upon mak - 
ing the picture even more gloomy. It was tho 
moment of sunset, but the sun was lost in a 
wilderness of thunder-clouds. Suddenly a sound 



68 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

clear and sweet came to me. It was the first 
sound, save thunder and wind, that I had heard 
since reaching the peak. A long, pure note 
followed by one much higher, repeated several 
times, formed the song of my companion on the 
heights. It was the farewell to the day of a 
white-throated sparrow, that sweetest singer of 
the mountain peaks. A feeling of forlornness 
which had been creeping over me was dispelled. 
Let the storm come; I was ready for it. 

Not many rods below the peak, on the very 
verge of the eastern crag, stands an enormous 
detached rock, roughly cubical in shape, and at 
least twenty feet in each dimension. This rock, 
which is known as "the Cow," rests upon a 
narrow shelf having a saucer-shaped depression 
about fifteen feet in diameter in its upper sur- 
face The Cow projects slightly beyond the 
outer edge of the ledge, but at the point where 
it projects the concavity of the under granite 
leaves a space exactly eighteen inches in height 
and several feet long, which admits light into 
the hollow beneath the Cow. Years before, 1 
had discovered this strange cave, and had found 
that a projecting corner of rock gave standing- 
room near enough to the narrow mouth to allow 
a man to creep into it. To this shelter I deter- 
mined to take my luggage for safe-keeping dur- 
ing the rain. As I wound my way down the 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOCORUA. 69 

zigzag path to the cave, a junco flew past me in 
the gloom and chirped inquiringly. A drop or 
two of rain fell. Thunder roared in the south- 
west as well as in the north. The mountains 
had lost the wonderful dark violet shade which 
they possessed before the light faded, and were 
now almost black, those nearest being darkest. 
As I reached the mouth of the cave, an uncom- 
fortable thought intruded itself upon my mind, 
— was it possible that bears used the cave? I 
peered in. The place was empty now, at all 
events. Pushing in my oilskin coat, jersey, 
knapsack with lunch, lantern, and star-atlas, I 
slid in after them. At the deepest part of the 
depression in the ledge, the space between the 
rock below and the rock above is thirty inches. 
I could not sit up straight, but I could recline 
comfortably at various angles. Lighting my 
lantern, I unpacked my bag and furnished my 
lodgings. A watch, match-box, foot rule, ther- 
mometer, pencil, a mirror for signaling, com- 
pass, hunting-knife, bird whistles, supper, 
breakfast, and dry underclothing made the cave 
seem quite homelike. The dry clothing at- 
tracted me, for I was wet with perspiration, 
and my thermometer reminded me that I felt 
chilly. I listened. Was it raining? No. 
Taking my lantern, supper, and dry clothes, I 
wriggled to the entrance and regained the air. 



70 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Happy thought : if any bear could get into that 
cave, it would be a very thin one. Unhappy 
thought: his thinness would betoken all the 
greater hunger. 

There was a lull in the storm, for although 
everything above was black, the wind seemed 
to have died away and the thunder to be very 
distant. On the narrow ledge between the 
towering pinnacle and the black abyss below 
the Cow, I discarded my damp clothes and put 
on the dry ones. The change was comforting. 
I was glad when it was accomplished, for I had 
no inclination to fight a bear in the costume of 
Mulvaney at the taking of Lungtungpen. 

Step by step I crept back up the cliff to the 
summit. There was wind enough on top, and 
my lantern had to be thrust into a crack in the 
rock on the lee side to keep it not only from 
blowing out, but from blowing away. The top 
of Chocorua is about the shape and size of a 
large, wide dining-table. On the south, other 
levels lead up to it gradually ; but west, north, 
and east this highest rock is bounded by abrupt 
sides, from which a fall in the night would be a 
serious matter. Lying down on this dizzy plat- 
form, I ate my supper with savage relish, and 
took new account of the night and its pictures. 
Except when lightning illumined some part of 
the horizon, the only things visible to me were 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOC OR U A. 71 

the long black ridge of Paugus, the hump of 
Passaconaway over Paugus, fragments of white 
ledges on the northern spurs of Chocorua, and 
lakes in the valley. Even Ossipee Lake, fif- 
teen miles or more away, was plainly distin- 
guishable as a white spot in the surrounding 
gloom. Lights shone from many of the cot- 
tages near Chocorua Lake, and from Birch in- 
tervale, Albany intervale, and Conway. They 
were the connecting link between me and the 
rest of mankind. In the sky there was absolute 
blackness, curiously broken once by the sudden 
appearance of the red planet for the space of a 
single minute. Sometimes a few drops of rain 
fell, but the second storm seemed to be reserv- 
ing most of its strength for a region farther 
east. It was now nine o'clock, and the first 
storm had passed far over into Maine, its light- 
ning playing with rapid flashes behind Mount 
Pecpjawket. At every flash the sky just behind 
the pyramidal peak assumed the color of dead 
gold, while the mountain was embossed upon it 
like an emblem on a shield. Occasionally the 
second storm produced lightning, and when it 
did so the effects were startling, so near was the 
heavenly fire. One flash was from side to side 
across a low cloud which hung near Chocorua 
on the east. It was very vivid, and so complex 
with its many delicate lines and loops of light 



72 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

that a fiery sentence appeared to have been 
written on the sky. Another bolt was broad 
and straight, and went down into the forest like 
an arrow. It was so near and so brilliant that 
for almost a minute I could see nothing. The 
thunder which followed it began in the zenith, 
and rolled away, booming and crashing, in three 
directions, lasting so long that I wished I had 
timed it, to see for how many seconds its terrific 
echoes refused to subside. As many of its 
rumblings and mutterings resounded from the 
ravines and hillsides below me, the effect of this 
great peal was unlike any I had ever before 
heard. 

While I was listening to the sighing of the 
wind-tossed forest in the hollows eastward of 
the mountain, another sound reached my ears, 
and made me concentrate my senses in an effort 
to determine its nature. At the moment I 
heard it, I was somewhat below the peak, lean- 
ing against a wall of rock facing the south. 
The sound seemed to come from above. It 
resembled that made by a thin stick or shingle 
when whirled rapidly in the air. At the same 
time there was a creaking, and sounds almost 
like wailing and groaning. A moment later, a 
slender column of white cloud, a hundred feet 
or more in height, but proportioned like a hu- 
man figure, glided past the mountain over the 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOCORUA. 73 

black abyss below the eastern cliffs. It is 
needless to say that I was interested in these 
phenomena. I was much more than interested ; 
and the fact that I was absolutely alone, in the 
dark, miles away from home, with a storm howl- 
ing around me, was brought clearly to my mind. 
The legend of Chocorua, the Indian for whom 
this mountain was named, of his curse upon the 
whites, and of his melancholy death near these 
eastern cliffs, rose, for some illogical reason, 
into my memory. 

The sounds in the air continued, and at one 
time made me wonder whether electric waves 
passing through the low-hanging clouds above 
me could produce them. There being no light 
accompanying the sounds, I dismissed this hy- 
pothesis as unsatisfactory. Once I thought that 
something was scratching and grinding down 
the side of a sloping ledge. Since rain began 
falling thick and fast at the same moment, I 
seized my lantern and retreated to the cave. 
When I gained the dizzy rock at the mouth 
of the cave, the heavens again spoke, and mist- 
forms swept past in front of me. The next 
moment I was at the bottom of the cave, won- 
dering whether a temperature of 60°, which my 
thermometer recorded, justified wholly the goose- 
flesh that crept over me. 

My lantern cast a clear, steady light into all 



74 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

parts of the cave. Now and then a flash of 
lightning showed where the entrance faced the 
east, and where one or two other cracks were 
open between the Cow and its rocky foundation. 
I lay perfectly motionless, pondering upon the 
strange sounds I had heard. My eyes rested 
upon several stones lying in the narrow space 
beyond my feet where the two rocks neared each 
other. Something moved there. A body had 
passed from the shelter of one stone to that 
of another. I held my breath, and watched. 
Again a brownish thing flashed past an open- 
ing, came nearer, darted forward into the light, 
vanished, reappeared, came clearly into view, 
shot back, and finally sped across a broad, well- 
lighted face of rock, and revealed itself as a 
large short-tailed mouse, — perhaps an Eastern 
Phenacomys as yet unknown to collectors. Al- 
though I did not move for a long time, he failed 
to reappear, and my only companion was a 
gauzy-winged fly which sat upon my knee and 
contemplated the flame of the lantern. ^ 

The rain continuing, I sang and whistled un- 
til after ten o'clock, when I crawled to the 
mouth of my cave and looked down into the 
depths beneath. A stone thrown far out, so as 
to clear the first few ledges, might fall eight 
hundred feet before it struck the rocks below. 
As I stared into the darkness, I found that 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOCORUA. 75 

much which had been invisible an hour earlier 
was now dimly outlined in black and white. 
The sky, too, showed gaps in its curtaiD, and 
che white lakes in the distant valleys were more 
silvery than before. The storm was over, the 
moon was at work eating the clouds, and soon, 
I hoped, the stars would keep their tryst. Lan- 
tern in hand, I crept up the rocks, and settled 
myself once more on the peak. All my friendly 
lights in the valley had gone out, and I was 
now alone in the sky. 

Paugus, Passaconaway, and Whiteface were 
quite clearly outlined against each other and 
the sky. They seemed very near, however, so 
that it was easier for me to imagine myself on a 
lonely rock in the ocean, with huge waves about 
to overwhelm me, than to make those combing 
waves stand back three, eight, twelve miles and 
become spruce-covered mountains. Gradually 
other mountain outlines became discernible, and 
the cloud-curtain above showed folds and wrin- 
kles, which in time wore out under the moon's 
chafing and let through a glimpse of Mars or 
Vega, marvelously far away in that serene ether. 
Half an hour before midnight the pale disk of 
the moon appeared through the thin clouds, and 
at the witching hour she sailed out proudly into 
a little space of clear blue-black heaven. The 
wind came in fresher puffs, a snowy cloud-cap 



76 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

rested on the head of Paugus, and the air was 
so much colder that I was glad to put on both 
jersey and oilskin jacket. A dozen lakes and 
twenty -five mountain peaks were visible at half 
past twelve, and Mars had worked a place for 
his red eye, so that it could look down through 
the breaking clouds without interruption. 
Drowsiness now overtook me, and in order to 
keep awake I was forced to walk rapidly up and 
down the small area of the top, or to jump 
about over the ledges farther south. About 
one o'clock a light flashed brightly from a point 
near the Maine line ; perhaps in Fryeburg. At 
first I thought it might be a fire which would 
gather strength and size; then, as it appeared 
to move and come nearer, it looked more like 
the headlight of a locomotive. My glass made 
it seem smaller, and the motion was so slow and 
irregular that I thought the gleam might be 
from a doctor's buggy, as the man of sickness 
took his way through the night. 

My own light was now growing dim, so I 
extinguished it in order to save the remaining 
oil for emergencies. Immediately afterwards a 
bat flew against the lantern, and then perched 
upon a lichen -hung rock near by, to recover his 
composure. The moon slowly made way with 
the clouds, and by two o'clock a quarter part 
of the sky was clear. The mercury had dropped 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOCORUA. 77 

to 52°, and the moisture hurled against the 
mountain by the wind was condensed and sent 
boiling and seething up the sides of the peak. 
Tongues of fog lapped around me with the same 
spasmodic motion which flames display in rising 
from a plate of burning alcohol. At first they 
scarcely reached the peak; then they came to 
my feet, and swept past me around both sides 
of my platform; finally they flung themselves 
higher and higher, hiding not only the black 
valley from which they came, but Paugus and 
more distant peaks, the sky, the moon, and the 
glimmering stars. Suddenly from the fog-filled 
air came once more the gruesome sound which 
I had heard earlier in the night. Its cause was 
nearer to me now, and I felt sure that it was 
some creature of the air, and consequently no- 
thing which could cause me inconvenience. I 
strained my eyes to see the creature as it passed, 
but in vain, until in its flight it chanced to cross 
the face of the moon. Then the mystery was 
solved. I saw that it was either a night-hawk 
or a bird of similar size. The speed at which 
it was flying was wonderful. When it tacked 
or veered, it produced the extraordinary sounds 
which, with their echoes from the rocks, had so 
puzzled me at first. Once or twice during the 
night I had heard night-hawks squawking, and 
from this time on their harsh voices were heard 



78 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC A MP WATER. 

at intervals mingled with the booming which, 
for some unexplained reason, they make by nigh' 
as well as by day; after as well as during the 
breeding season. 

A few minutes after two o'clock a large me- 
teor shot across a small patch of clear sky near 
the constellation Andromeda, and was quenched 
in the fog. From time to time other smaller 
ones flashed in brief glory in the same quarter 
of the heavens, and one brilliant fragment 
burned its way past Jupiter, as though measur- 
ing its passing glory with the light of the planet. 
The wind was falling, the temperature rising, 
and, following these two influences, the fog de- 
creased, until its only remnants clung to the 
ponds and rivers far below. Two thirds of the 
sky were clear by three o'clock. In the east, 
the Pleiades sparkled in mysterious consulta- 
tion ; farther north, Capella flashed her colored 
lights, and Venus, radiant with a lustre second 
only to Selene's own, threw off the clouds which 
for an hour had concealed her loveliness, and 
claimed from Mars the foremost place in the 
triumph of the night. Her reign was short. 
At a quarter after three I noticed that the cloud- 
bank which lay along the eastern and northern 
horizon was becoming more sharply defined by 
the gradual growth of a white band above it. 
A greater orb than Venus was undermining her 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CHOCORUA. 79' 

power in the east. The white line impercepti- 
bly turned to a delicate green, and extended its 
area to left and right and upward. The clouds 
in the high sky took on harder outlines and 
rounder shapes. Shadows were being cast 
among them, and a light was stealing through 
them from something brighter even than the 
yellow moon. The pale green band had changed 
to blue, the blue was deepening to violet, and 
through this violet sky the brightest meteor of 
the night passed slowly down until it met the 
hills. High in the sky the stars were growing 
dim, and the spaces between the clouds, which 
looked for all the world like a badly painted 
picture, were growing blue, deep real blue. The 
line of brightest light above the eastern clouds 
showed a margin of orange. Venus in the violet 
sky was still dazzling, but her glory was no 
longer of the night, but of the twilight. She 
was wonderful, in spite of the stronger light 
which was slowly overpowering her. Mars 
burned like a red coal low down in the west, 
unaffected thus far by the sun's rays, while 
Jupiter, supreme among the high stars, was 
paling fast as the light of day rolled towards 
him. 

The eastern sky looked strangely flat. Its 
colors were like a pastel drawing. Small, very 
black clouds, with hard outlines, lay unrelieved 



80 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

against the violet, silver, and orange. A full 
hour had sped by since I first noted the coming 
of the day, and still the earth below slept on. 
Hark ! up from the deep valley below the Cow 
comes a single bird-voice, but scarcely are its 
notes sprinkled upon the cool, clear air, when a 
dozen, yes, fifty singers join their voices in a 
medley of morning music. The first songster 
was a white-throat, and the bulk of the chorus 
was made up of j uncos and white-throats, the 
stronger song of Swainson's and hermit thrushes 
coming in clearly now and then from points 
more distant from the peak. There was ecstasy 
in those matins. No sleepy choir of mortal 
men or women ever raised such honest, buoyant 
music in honor of the day's coming. The birds 
love the day, and they love life for all that each 
day brings. They labor singing, and they sing 
their vespers, as they sing their matins, with 
hearts overflowing with joy and thanksgiving. 

There is something inexpressibly touching and 
inspiring in the combination of fading night, 
with its planets still glowing, and the bird's 
song of welcome to the day. Night is more 
eloquent than day in telling of the wonders of 
the vast creation. Day tells less of distance, 
more of detail; less of peace, more of contest; 
less of immortality, more of the perishable. The 
sun, with its dazzling light and burning heat, 




O 

S 

M 

H 
« 

i 

Qf 



A NIGHT ALONE ON CEOCORUA. 81 

hides from us the stars, and those still depths 
as yet without stars. It narrows our limit of 
vision, and at the same time hurries us and 
worries us with our own tasks which we will not 
take cheerfully, and the tasks of others which 
are done so ill. Night tells not only of repose 
on earth, but of life in that far heaven where 
every star is a thing of motion and a creation 
full of mystery. Men who live only in great 
cities may be pitied for being atheists, for they 
see little beyond the impurity of man; but it 
seems incredible that a being with thoughts 
above appetite, and imagination above lust, 
should live through a night in the wilderness, 
with the stars to tell him of space, the dark 
depths of the sky to tell him of infinity, and his 
own mind to tell him of individuality, and yet 
doubt that some Being more powerful and less 
fickle than himself is in this universe. The 
bird-music coming before the night is ended 
combines the purest' and most joyous element of 
the day with the deep meaning of the night. 
The birds bear witness to the ability of life to 
love its surroundings and to be happy. The 
night bears witness to the eternity of life and to 
the harmony of its laws. 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 

The horn of Chocorua rose into a sky full of 
threatening colors and shadows. Its own color- 
ing was sinister, its outlines vague, its height 
apparently greater than usual. Low, growling 
thunder came from its ledges and ravines. The 
forest at its feet, which ended at my door, was 
silent; no whisper swept through its waiting 
leaves. In the west as in the north, cloud 
masses were boiling up into the sky, covering 
the blue with white, gray, and black, through 
which now and then shot a ray of gold from the 
protesting sun. A tempest seemed brewing as 
a not unwelcome close of a mid- August day. 

A tall man emerged from the woods and came 
striding towards me across the grass. A rifle 
swung to and fro in his right hand as he walked. 
It was a repeating rifle, one of those inclusive 
successors of the fowling-piece, shot-pouch, 
powder-flask, cap-box, and wad-pocket of this 
tall man's boyhood. The stride ended at my 
side, and the tall man and I spoke of the heat, 
the drought, and the approaching storm. Just 
as he was preparing to lope onwards down the 
ribbon road through the birches, I said : — 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 83 

"I hear Merrill caught a bear Saturday, and 
brought it out at Piper's." 

" That so ? How big was it ? " 
"A small one, a two-year-old, probably. It 
was in one of his traps and he shot it." 

"Well, I 've kept up with him this time. I 
shot one less than an hour ago, and he warn't 
in any trap, either." 

I looked at the man wonderingly. There had 
been no unusual spark in his eye, flush on his 
bronzed cheek, or spring in his heavy step. He 
had not boasted, or even spoken of his achieve- 
ment until I touched his pride by my tale of 
his rival's success. Would he have gone home 
without telling me? I think so. Yet this 
meeting with a bear, alone, on the high ledges 
of Chocorua, had been one of the joys of this 
man's life. Many a weary hour had he carried 
his magazine rifle over the ledges, treading 
softly, keeping eye and ear alert, hoping to see 
Bruin on his feeding-ground. A year before 
he had trapped and killed some of the great 
creatures; but shooting a beast caught In a 
forty-pound steel trap is tame sport compared 
with facing a free bear on the open ledges. 

Before the hunter left me, we had arranged 
that soon after sunrise on the following morn- 
ing he was to pass through my dooryard on his 
way to the spot where, under those black clouds, 
poor Bruin was lying dead. 



84 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

The rage around Chocorua deepened. Boom, 
boom, of thunder rolled downward from the 
heights of storm. The peak was swept by- 
masses of rain. Flash after flash lit up the 
darkening sky behind the grim mountain. Still 
the nearer forests lay at rest, waiting. Then a 
golden rift came in the western cloud-bank. 
One half of the storm rolled past us on the 
south, drenching Ossipee and Wolfborough, the 
other half on the north, soaking Conway and 
Fryeburg; we alone were dry. 

The morning of the 13th of August was 
breathlessly hot. Even the hermit thrushes 
forgot to sing. A rattle of wheels brought me 
from breakfast to join the party organized to 
bring home the bear. A strong, sure-footed 
horse was drawing a farm wagon which had 
been the stand-by of an earlier generation, and 
which, therefore, was made of solid stuff. My 
tall friend and two of his hunting satellites 
were in it, and around them were strewn rifle, 
hatchet, ropes, empty grain -bags, and other ap- 
paratus to be used in bringing the dead brute 
down the mountain. My master of the horse, 
an alert and muscular Prince Edward Islander, 
stood by ready to march, so the word was given, 
and we five, some walking, some in the ancient 
wagon, started for the mountain. 

For a quarter of a mile the road was good, 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 85 

winding through my pasture and belts of white 
birches. Then we turned from it and plowed 
through beds of brake and blackberry bushes 
dripping and glistening with dew. We might 
as well have waded waist deep in the lake, 
which would have been warmer though no more 
wet than that dew-deluged tangle. Next came 
a ravine filled with spruces, over which towered 
two immense canoe birches, at whose feet a cold 
spring bubbled in a sandy pool. The horse 
wound in and out among the trees, shaking from 
them showers of cold dew-drops. Small sap- 
lings and bushes bowed before the wagon and 
passed under its axles; large ones were bent 
away by strong hands, or hacked down. Some- 
times the wheels locked against tree-trunks, 
bringing the horse to a sudden standstill, and 
almost throwing the passengers to the ground; 
and sometimes they sank into unseen hollows 
filled to the brim with ferns, making the wagon 
careen so that all its contents slid, or struggled 
lot to slide, against its sinking side. 

Beyond the ravine and its dripping spruces 
was a narrow sunny valley pointing straight 
towards the mountain. Up this valley our 
party continued its course, the sun drying the 
dew from our clothes, and flashing many colors 
in the drops still clinging to brakes and grasses. 
Fifteen hundred feet above us towered the West 



86 AT TEE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Ledges, on which the bear had been shot. As 
one looks at Chocorua from the south, its peak 
seems to rest upon the shoulders of two converg- 
ing ridges, one sloping upward towards it from 
the southeast, and one from the southwest. Be- 
tween the two ridges the soft forest drapery of 
the mountain falls in graceful folds and curves 
to the level of the lake. We were in one of 
these folds, climbing towards the steep inner 
side of the western ridge. On each side of us 
lofty trees clung to the slopes of the valley. 
Owls hoot in these woods after twilight and at 
dawn. Great boulders lie in confusion in the 
perpetual shadows of the trees, and in the cav- 
erns between and under them are dens of por- 
cupines, foxes, and skunks. 

Not until we reached the torrent at the foot 
of the west ridge was the wagon abandoned and 
the horse tethered. The forest at this point 
consists mainly of poplars, birches, and oaks. 
The bear-slayer led the way through them, and 
his more muscular satellite followed at his heels, 
cutting saplings in order to form a path for 
our descent with the bear. After climbing sev- 
eral hundred feet, we rested. A loud humming 
filled the air, yet no bees were to be seen. 
They appeared to be in the higher foliage, at- 
tracted by something on the leaves. We ex- 
amined the lower branches, and then the leaves 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 87 

of low shrubs and plants. They seemed to be 
covered with dew, but the dew was sticky and 
proved to be sweet to the taste. As we contin- 
ued our walk we found that the entire side of 
the mountain had been sprinkled with heavenly 
sweetness of the same kind. 

The roar of bees had become familiar to our 
ears. The bear-slayer was bending down a 
slender beech for the satellite to cut, when sud- 
denly he uttered a cry and sprang backward. 
"Run, run," he shouted, and in a moment the 
Islander and the small satellite were bounding 
down the mountain-side like chamois. The 
larger satellite became a football under the 
bear-slayer's feet, and I, hearing a second cry 
of "hornets!" plunged headforemost into the 
bushes and crawled away under the brakes, 
thus avoiding both the hornets and the necessity 
of re-climbing lost ground. The bear-slayer's 
retreat was marked by repeated howls of pain 
which lent further speed to the flying heels of 
the rear-guard. It was some time before the 
ignominious stampede was checked and a fresh 
ascent begun. The bear-slayer had been stung 
in three places, and the larger satellite declared 
he had saved himself from a sting by pulling 
the hornet off his back with his fingers. 

Standing among the young trees of the forest 
were many gray stumps of ancient origin, — 



88 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

decayed relics of forest gentry now displaced 
by the democracy of poplars and birches. 
These stumps bore no axe marks; they had 
fallen at the command of the tornado, not of 
the lumber thief. On their sides were long 
scratches which looked like claw marks. Had 
"Sis Wildcat" been trying her claws there? 
No; but "Brer Bar" had been. Near by was 
a small grove of oaks, not one of which was 
more than a foot in diameter. Their sides 
were deeply scored by Bruin's claws, and their 
highest branches hung down upon the rest of 
their limbs, broken and dying. There is 
hardly an oak on Chocorua which has not been 
climbed by bears in acorn time, and disfigured 
by the great brutes in their attempts to reach 
the coveted nuts. 

Towering close above the oaks we could see 
the abrupt faces of the West Ledges. We 
seemed to be at the foot of a great feudal castle 
whose gray walls needed scaling ladders to be 
conquered. Ferns grew in the crevices in the 
rock; tiny streams of water trickled down its 
sides and fed mosses and lichens; honeysuckle, 
mountain ash, wild Solomon's seal, and striped 
maple sprang in luxuriant tangles from its feet, 
and tripped us as we skirted the castle's base 
and sought a break in its smooth walls. Pres- 
ently we found one, — a rift made originally by 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 89 

ice, but long since widened and deepened by 
other erosive forces. Clinging to tree-trunks 
or the tough stems of blueberry bushes, we 
pulled ourselves up the steep ravine and reached 
the top of the first ledge. The mountain was 
still unconquered before us, but turning we saw, 
sunlit and smiling, the world we had left. 
Curving, undulating forest; warm spots of 
open pasture ; the Hammond farm, from which 
one of the principal paths starts up Chocorua; 
my own red-roofed cottage with squares of flax, 
millet, corn, and buckwheat giving patchwork 
colors to its clearing; Chocorua ponds and the 
cottages on Nickerson's hill, and then the 
wider world of forest, mountain, river, and 
lake, — Ossipee, Sandwich Dome, Bearcamp, 
Winnepesaukee, — blended beauties whose 
names awaken pleasant memories and whose 
picture is a joy to look upon, — all these things 
we saw, and much more which we only half 
thought about, so eager were we to go on with 
our quest. 

Climbing ledge after ledge, wading through 
thickets of mountain ash, dogwood, low spruce 
and blueberry bushes, we gained at last the 
highest open point on West Ridge. On three 
sides the land fell away abruptly. On the 
north the ridge, heavily grown with stunted 
spruce and poplars, continued toward the peak. 



90 AT THE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

It did not go straight towards that proud rock, 
but sought it by bending westward and then 
northward in a great bow. The peak, conse- 
quently, stood the other side of a vast hollow 
filled with tangled forest. It was near, and yet 
appeared unattainable. I thought of the winter 
day when I had climbed to this point over four 
feet of packed and frozen snow and seen the 
Chocorua horn, crusted with ice and flanked 
by mighty snowdrifts, hanging in the bright blue 
sky. Then, stimulated by the keen air, I had 
plunged into the hollow, crossed it, scaled its 
farther side on hands and knees, gained the foot 
of the peak, and finally won its slippery summit, 
no larger than my dining table; and lying there 
half freezing, had seen the snow-covered world 
from Casco Bay to the Green Mountains; Mo- 
nadnock to Dixville Notch. The sun of August 
did not encourage such exploits, and a dead bear 
lying hidden near us drew our thoughts away 
from the heights to the damp thicket close 

below. 

The bear-slayer was telling his story: ' 1 was 
coming along here, sort of softly, thinking it 
was just the kind of place for a bear, when just 
as I got to this open ledge I heard a hustling 
round in that snarl of bushes. I stopped short 
and listened and peeped in. There was some- 
thing black and hairy rubbing round in the 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 91 

blueberry bushes, —you can see how thick the 
berries are in there. Well, I thought, I must be 
careful ; there are lots of folks berrying, and I 
should hate to put one of these pills into a wo- 
man picking blueberries. It would settle her 
right off. So I peeked round, till I was dead 
sure it was a bear, and then I let drive — at 
what I could see. The ball hit him in his side 
not far back of his shoulder, and he gave an 
awful roar and started out this way. I climbed 
up on this big boulder, five feet out of harm's 
way, and waited. He was letting out roars and 
then drawing awful deep breaths. You could 
hear those gasps a mile. I could not see him, 
he was in so thick in the bushes. But then he 
began to drag himself off towards old Coroway 
and I started after him. I heard him go ker- 
chunk down this ledge, and then I caught sight 
of his head and let him have another, and a 
third ball, but they did n't seem to stop him a 
bit, just glanced off his skull, I s'pose. Well, 
he got down 'most a hundred feet before I could 
get a sight at his side again, but when I did, I 
put one in where it stopped his gasping and 
kicking." 

During this narrative we had followed the 
hunter through the network of trees, bushes, 
and brambles, tracing the track made by the 
bear in his agony. Branches were broken, 



92 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

leaves crushed, moss stained, and rocks torn 
up. As we descended the north slope towards 
the dark ravine which the bear had sought, the 
sunlight grew dim and the air cold. Suddenly 
I saw the bear. At the foot of a slippery ledge, 
over which hung dripping wet moss, lying upon 
a deep bed of sphagnum, was a gaunt black 
form. Dead and still as it was, it sent a thrill 
through me. I seemed to see the being for 
whom this wild region had been created. The 
horn-blowing, pistol-firing, peanut-eating tourist 
is out of place in the rugged ravines of Choco- 
rua. Even the bronzed, gray-shirted native 
with his magazine rifle is not in tune with the 
solemn music of this wilderness. But in the 
dead creature on the moss I saw the real owner 
of forest and ledge, mountain pool and hidden 
lake. He looked weary and worn, as though 
life had been full of hunger and terror. The 
small, keen, wicked eyes were closed ; the cruel 
teeth were locked tight, the broad feet were cut 
by his last struggles on the ledges, and his thin 
hair, showing the hide below it, was flecked 
with blood which had oozed from four bullet 
wounds. 

We five men gathered around the dead bear 
and looked at him, felt of him, counted his 
nails, tried to open his set jaws, guessed at his 
weight, discussed his character, wondered at his 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 93 

ability to maintain life in such a region, and 
marveled especially at the nature of his kind 
to bring forth young in late winter and to rear 
them in the chill and foodless months of Feb- 
ruary and March. With great interest we 
sought through his capacious stomach to see 
what he had eaten, and found quarts of ripe 
blueberries, scarlet cherries, and what we at 
first took to be grubs dug from decaying 
stumps. Closer examination showed that Bruin 
had swallowed the whole of a hornet's nest, for 
the perfect insects, hundreds of their undevel- 
oped young in the brood-cells, and the gray, 
papery nest were all recognized. This bear 
certainly knew how to pick ripe blueberries and 
not to pick green ones. I saw but one green 
berry in the quarts which he had gathered. 

Drawing the bear's fore and hind feet on 
each side together, the hunter strapped them 
firmly. He next tied the head to the feet, so 
that it should not drag, and then passed two 
maple poles through the loops made by the two 
pairs of lashed feet, and called upon the larger 
satellite and the Islander to shoulder their bur- 
den. They did so, and the homeward march 
began, the bearers groaning. Possibly a hun- 
dred yards had been traversed before the Is- 
lander tripped and fell, pulling the bear down 
upon his prostrate form, and receiving also the 



94 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

weight of the heavy satellite. The hunter took 
his place under the poles, and fifty yards more 
were gained. Then the hunter, with a resound- 
ing exclamation, flung down the poles and 
whipped out his hunting-knife. With difficulty 
he was dissuaded from skinning and quartering 
Bruin on the spot. The plan which induced 
him to stay his hand was suggested by one of 
the party who had read of what he called an 
"Indian wagon." Under his direction two long 
poles were cut and the bear was lashed on top 
of them near their heavy ends. The satellites 
then stood between the light ends, as horses 
stand between the shafts, and began dragging 
the bear down the steep side of the mountain. 
They had not gone fifty feet before the weight 
of the bear turned the poles over and left the 
satellites sprawling in the bushes. Once more 
knives were drawn and skinning threatened. 

The next proposal was to wrap Bruin in grain 
bags so as to protect his skin, and then to drag 
and roll him down to where traveling would be 
easier. The bear slayer consented to try this 
experiment, and two large shorts bags were drawn 
over the body, one from its head, the other from 
its tail. Other bags were laid under the body, 
and, thus protected, it was dragged, bumping 
and rolling, down several hundred yards to the 
foot of the ledges. Short cross-sticks were then 



BRINGING HOME THE BEAR. 95 

inserted in the lashings, which were tied round 
the bear's legs, and four of us, two on each side, 
or two in front and two behind, raised the body 
by these sticks and bore it through the winding 
path we had cleared while ascending. The 
lesser satellite, carrying the rifle, hatchet, and 
other luggage, brought up the rear, and urged 
on the party by jeering remarks and snatches of 
song. In spite of repeated cautions from the 
bear-slayer, whose stings still smarted, we nar- 
rowly escaped walking into the hornet's nest a 
second time. 

More than six hours had elapsed since our 
departure from home when our little procession 
wound out of the woods into my dooryard. 
Raspberry vinegar never was more gratefully 
swallowed, and never was dead emperor received 
with more respect than poor Bruin by the 
crowds which flocked to view his remains dur- 
ing the afternoon of that hot August day. One 
bought his nails, another his teeth, a third his 
thinly haired skin, while pieces of his flesh, 
prepared for future cooking, were carried away 
in various directions. As when sugar is spilled 
upon the ground, ants come from every quarter 
to gather up the grains and draw them away, 
so dead Bruin drew gossips and idlers from all 
parts of the town, eager to pick up bits of his 
body or stories of his melancholy end. 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 

It is the theory that there are always plenty 
of hens to be bought in a New England farming 
town; but as a matter of fact, in the month 
of July, 1892, the country north of Bearcamp 
presented such a dearth of hens that, after 
traveling miles in my efforts to buy some, I re- 
turned to my own neighborhood and hired a 
contingent for the season. The transaction 
was unique, but, on the whole, mutually satis- 
factory. It had one drawback. When one 
owns fowls, the accumulation of family wrath 
against the rooster on account of too early crow- 
ing on his part always finds relief in eating 
him; but when one hires a rooster, his life is 
charmed by contract, and he can with impu- 
nity crow the family into nervous prostration. 
The magnificent Black Spanish cock hired by 
me began crowing, on the morning of August 
21, at twenty minutes of four. Not a ray of 
daylight pierced the bank of mist which filled 
the east. Nothing but instinct or a bad con- 
science could have told Murillo that it was time 
to crow. Nevertheless, on this occasion his 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 97 

song was welcome, for I had counted upon his 
arousing me early in order that I might spend 
an entire day with the Dead Tree. 

On the northern shore of Chocorua Lake a 
broad reach of swampy woodland is broken by 
a meadow. At the point where the small and 
very cool brook which bounds the meadow on 
the west enters the lake, a tall pine once cast 
its shadow upon a deep pool at its foot. The 
pine died many years ago, and its bark has 
been entirely removed by weather and wood- 
peckers, leaving its trunk and eigluvv-seven 
branches, or stumps of branches, as white as 
bleached bones. A few rods farther from the 
mouth of the brook stands a smaller pine of 
similar character. These two trees form a 
famous bird roost, and at their feet I planned 
to stay from sunrise to sunset on this August 
day, in order to see, during consecutive hours, 
how many birds would make use of the tree as 
a perch. From frequent visits during this and 
earlier years, I knew that the tree was not only 
a rendezvous for the birds living in the meadow 
and adjoining woods, but also a kursaal for 
tourists in feathers, and for all birds coming to 
the lake to hunt or to fish. 

As I left the house, hermit thrushes were 
uttering the short complaining notes of alarm 
characteristic of them at twilight. Dark as it 



98 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

was, they were awake and stirring. Reaching 
the bank of the lake a minute or two after four, 
I startled a spotted sandpiper from the beach, 
and heard his peeping whistle as he flew from 
me across the black water, beyond which only 
dusky masses of gloom marked the pine woods 
on the farther shore. The surface of the water 
was disturbed by thousands of insects cutting 
queer figures upon it. Where they moved, 
white ripples followed. As I walked along the 
moist sand of the beach, pickerel shot out from 
the shore, bats squeaked, and frogs jumped into 
deeper water with nervous croaks of fear. 
Then a whippoorwill sang, and as his weird 
notes echoed from the woods, Venus sailed clear 
from the mist bank and reflected her dazzling 
beauty in the lake. As I drew near the mouth 
of the brook, a solitary tattler ran along the 
sand in front of me, whistling softly. When I 
turned into the bushes, he stopped and resumed 
his search for breakfast. 

The dead tree rose above me, jet black 
against the dark sky. Stepping softly through 
the bushes, I disturbed the wary catbirds, and 
their fretful cries awoke the meadow. At 
twenty minutes past four, three whippoorwills 
were singing, and two catbirds, with several 
hermit thrushes, were complaining. A few mo- 
ments later, the call of a veery was heard, a 




THE DEAD TREE 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 99 

song sparrow gave a sharp squeak, and then, 
so still was the air, I heard the heavy stamping 
of my horse in his stable, a quarter of a mile 
away, as he gained his feet after a long night's 
rest. The stars were growing paler moment 
by moment, and outlines becoming sharper in 
the bushes and trees near me. A Swainson's 
thrush uttered its clear "quick," expressive of 
much more vigilance than the cries of the veery 
and the hermit, yet less fault-finding than the 
mew of the catbird. 

I settled myself comfortably amid the bushes 
eastward of the dead trees, near enough to them 
to see even a humming-bird if one alighted on 
the bare branches. At 4.35 I had heard eight 
kinds of birds, yet the crows, notorious for 
early rising, had not spoken. A minute later 
one cawed sleepily among the eastern pines 
where the mist lay thickest, and soon a dozen 
voices responded. Dense as was the fog, the 
light of day made swift inroads upon the shad- 
ows, and when, about quarter to five, a young 
chestnut-sided warbler came out of a dewy bush 
near me, its colors were plainly distinguishable. 
The little bird looked sleepy and dull. It 
moved languidly, and so did three Maryland 
yellow-throats which appeared from the same 
clump of thick bushes a moment later. As yet 
no bird of the day had sung. 



100 AT TEE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Far away in the swampy woods to the north 
a big red-shouldered hawk cried "hy-e, ky-e, 
ky-e." I remembered the morning, just a year 
previous, when, sitting in about the same spot, 
with Puffy perched on a dead limb over my 
head, a red-shouldered hawk had flown with 
stately-wing-beat to one of the lower branches 
of the dead tree, and then, suddenly discovering 
the owl, had thrust its head forward, opened 
wide its beak, and, with its fierce eyes glaring, 
had shrieked its hatred at the almost unmoved 
owl. This morning it did not visit the meadow, 
probably finding its humble game nearer home. 
The first bird to appear flying above the level 
of the meadow was a graceful night-hawk. 
Perhaps he had just come down from a night's 
revel in the cool air over Chocorua's summit. 
I wondered whether he had been one of a com- 
pany of between two and three hundred of his 
tribe which deployed across the sky on the af- 
ternoon of the 19th, just in advance of a violent 
thunderstorm. Yearly, about the 20th of Au- 
gust, the night-hawks muster their forces and 
parade during one or two afternoons. Yet 
there seems to be no diminution in the number 
of the local birds after the army disappears. 
Perhaps it is formed of migrants from the 
north; or perhaps the display is, after all, only 
a drill, preparatory to a later flight. 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 101 

The Maryland yellow-throats, in moving 
about the bushes, discovered me, and began 
scolding at my intrusion. They came so near 
to me that they seemed within reach of my 
hands. I kept perfectly still, and half closed 
my eyes. Their inspection seemed to convince 
them that I was harmless, for they went away, 
and presently the male sang his "rig-a-jig, rig- 
a-jig, rig-a-jig" close behind me. I am con- 
vinced that closing the eyes does a great deal 
to reassure a timid bird. Owls entirely cloak 
their evil appearance by simply drawing their 
eyelids down, and closing their feathers tightly 
about them. On discovering a man, birds 
watch, not his legs or his body, but his face, and 
his eyes are the most conspicuous part of his 
face and fullest of menace. I have sometimes 
fancied that nervous birds knew when they were 
watched, even though they could not see the 
observer. 

At 4.48 a kingbird came sailing and fluttering 
over the meadow, its chattering cries giving 
ample warning of its approach. It lighted in 
the big tree, and scanned sky, water, and grass, 
searching for something with which to quarrel. 
A flicker passed silently, coming, as the king- 
bird had, from the woods, and going to a tree 
near the lake shore. Small birds, possibly war- 
blers, flew by, westward. A blue jay screamed 



102 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

harshly in the edge of the woods, but the fog, 
which was growing more and more dense upon 
the meadow, discouraged its coming to the dead 
trees. Just at five o'clock a goldfinch undulated 
past, and the noisy rattle of a kingfisher echoed 
along the edge of the pond, provoking answers 
from a red squirrel, whose chatter seemed an 
imitation of the call, and from a crow, whose 
mimicry of the fisher's rattle was remarkably 
good. Probably all bird-calls originated in the 
efforts of their makers to reproduce sounds which 
pleased or startled them. In this case, Chickaree 
and Corvus had no sober motive for replying to 
the kingfisher; they may neither of them have 
associated the rattle with the blue projectile 
which made it. Both were entertained or at- 
tracted by the sound, and each in its way tried 
to reproduce it. It is by a similar process, 
doubtless, that parrots, crows, and blue jays 
acquire the power of producing sounds which 
correspond to our words. Later, they may gain, 
through experience, a knowledge of the meaning 
or force of such words, but often no such know- 
ledge lies behind the empty iteration of the 
parrot. 

For nearly a quarter of an hour there seemed 
to be a lull in the process of bird-awakening. 
The Maryland yellow-throats were moving, and 
now and then the male sang a little. Crows 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 103 

called in the distance, and the catbirds moved 
restlessly about from one part of the meadow 
to another, mewing, but nothing new appeared 
under the fog mantle. The spell was broken 
by the appearance of one of the small tyrant 
flycatchers, which are so difficult to identify 
during the migrations unless they are killed and 
closely examined. This one seemed to me to be 
a least flycatcher (Empidonax minimus), there 
being almost no trace of yellow in his coloring, 
lie flew from point to point, in or just over the 
bushes, catching small insects with vicious snaps 
of his beak. Apparently it was necessary, for 
the proper working of his machinery, to have 
his tail jerk spitefully several times a minute. 

About half past five three crows came to the 
big tree. One of them sailed softly by, but the 
other two alighted and began cawing in a fret- 
ful way. They were bedraggled with fog and 
dew, and their tones told of hunger and discom- 
fort. When they spoke, they thrust their heads 
far forward, giving them a low, mean air. They 
pulled viciously at their moist clothing, all the 
while keeping the keenest watch of their sur- 
roundings and the distance. Suddenly one of 
them saw me, and with a low croak flew away, 
his mate following. Again silence and fog pre- 
vailed. A cedar-bird, alighting on the tip of 
the old tree, seemed to shiver. He remained 



104 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

in the dim upper air but a moment, taking a 
headlong plunge into the shrubbery below. I 
thought even the frogs resented the slow-mov- 
ing vapors, for they croaked and splashed rest- 
lessly. 

A red-eyed vireo began his sermon at 6.10, 
and soon after, blue sky and scattering rays 
of sunlight appeared. Then the birds became 
more cheerful, and catbirds, crows, kingbirds, 
Maryland yellow - throats, and song sparrows 
vied with each other in activity and noise. 
Every one of them was intent upon making 
a good breakfast. The catbirds ate viburnum 
berries ; the crows marched upon the lake sand, 
searching for the waste of the waves; a barn 
swallow, the kingbirds, and several smaller fly- 
catchers hovered or darted in pursuit of insects, 
and the sparrows gathered their harvest from 
the earth. Then a flicker appeared in the top 
of the old tree, and, finding a resonant spot in 
the trunk, beat his reveille softly upon it. My 
neck fairly ached when I tried to imagine the 
mental and muscular effort required of the bird 
to produce such regular and rapid action with 
his beak. The only way in which a man can 
make as many beats to the minute with any 
regularity is by allowing his hand to rest in such 
a position that it will tremble. Then, by grasp- 
ing a pencil and resting its tip upon a board, a 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 105 

sound somewhat similar to the rolling rever- 
beration of the woodpecker's drumming can be 
produced. 

At half past six an olive - sided flycatcher 
came to the pine, but on seeing the kingbird dis- 
appeared. A moment later the kingbird flew 
away, and the olive-sided at once returned to 
the highest branch of the tree, and made it his 
point of rest during a long series of sallies after 
insects. When he caught one of large size, he 
brought it back to his perch, and pounded it 
violently against the branch until its struggles 
ceased, and its harder portions were, presuma- 
bly, reduced to a jelly. The kingbirds really 
have more right than any of the migrants to use 
the old tree, for they have built, year after year, 
time out of mind, in the spreading branches of 
the nearest living pine overhanging the lake. 
As August advances, however, they wander a 
good deal, paying visits to my orchard and other 
good feeding-grounds near the lake. While 
they are away, wood pewees and phoebes, olive- 
sided and least flycatchers, visit the vicinity, and 
enjoy the great tree and the fine chances which 
it offers of seeing insects over both land and 
water. About quarter to seven a solitary sand- 
piper flew swiftly over the meadow, calling. It 
made two great circles, rising above the trees, 
and then flew westward so fast that I looked to 



106 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

discover a pursuer, but could discern none. In 
the high woods, over which it flew, the crows 
were chortling. Northward the peak was clear, 
although below it a long scarf of mist trailed 
over the forest, moving westward. In the tree- 
top the flicker "flickered," and then drummed; 
called again, and drummed more emphatically. 
Soon a second woodpecker appeared, but flew 
by into the woods. The first one watched him, 
and then drummed again, whereupon the new- 
comer flew to him, and an animated dialogue 
took place, the second bird apparently having 
much to say in an excited manner. After they 
had finished their conference, the second bird 
flew away, and the first relapsed into a reverie. 
It lasted only a few moments, for shortly before 
seven o'clock two crows flew into the two dead 
trees, and the woodpecker hurried away. Each 
crow took the topmost perch on his tree, and 
began his toilet. Just then a frog jumped with 
a splash into the pool in front of me, and the 
crows, hearing the noise, looked searchingly 
down, saw me, and flew off without a caw. 

For several years the morning of the 21st of 
August has been my time for first seeing Wil- 
son's blackcap warblers on their autumn jour- 
ney southward. Having been in the swamp 
three hours without seeing one, I began to 
think that, 1892 being leap year, the pretty 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 107 

migrants might not keep their tryst; but I 
wronged them, for just at seven o'clock I heard 
a sharp "cheep" behind me, and, turning slowly, 
found a blackcap gazing at me nervously. No 
sooner had my eyes met his than he darted away. 

Between seven and eight the trees were oc- 
cupied by a flock of twelve cedar-birds, one or 
two flickers, several young robins, a pewee, a 
humming-bird, and some of the small flycatch- 
ers. The humming-bird is a tyrannical and 
blustering little bird, giving himself many airs. 
His wife is quite as much of a virago as he is 
of a bully. In this instance she was determined 
to drive away the flycatchers. Sitting in the 
big tree, and looking smaller than a well-fed 
dragonfly, she darted, every now and then, at 
one of the chebecs, and put him to flight. They 
tired her out, however, and after a while she 
gave up the struggle and departed. About 
7.30 a flock of small birds, including several 
chickadees, appeared in the edge of the woods 
and scattered over the meadow. Few of them 
came near enough to me for identification, but 
there seemed to be vireos and warblers among 
them. Their coming aroused other birds, and 
a goldfinch, a catbird chasing a veery, one or 
two Maryland yellow-throats, and a swift were 
in sight at one time. 

Thirst overtook me at eight, after four hours 



108 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

of watching, and I crept softly down to the 
brook. Before I had gone a dozen steps, a huge 
bird sprang from the sedgy growth by the lake 
shore and rose into the air. It was a blue 
heron which had been patrolling the sand within 
forty feet of me. He flew along the shore for 
some distance, then rose and passed over the 
trees towards the north, seeking, no doubt, my 
lonely lake, half a mile away in the forest. 
One morning, when hidden in the alders and 
viburnums which grow at the very foot of the 
big tree, I heard a queer guttural call or grunt 
from the meadow, and the next moment the 
heron stood above me, on the lowest limb of the 
pine. He looked sharply over the meadow and 
the lake, stretched first one leg, then the other, 
then each wing in turn, and finally fell to preen- 
ing his blue and gray plumes. Against a pale 
blue sky or ruffled water which mingles blue 
and gray with bits of white, he is marvelously 
well protected by his coloring. No wonder that 
the poor frogs fall a prey to his patient spear- 
ing. I kept breathlessly still, and watched this 
largest of our Chocorua birds. It seemed odd 
that the old tree should be a perch for him and 
for the humming-bird. The hummer is three 
and a quarter inches long; the heron spreads 
six feet with his great wings when he flies, and 
measures over four feet when standing. After 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 109 

a while I grew weary of watching the heron, and 
of wondering at his macaroni-like legs and his 
strangely concentrated stare, which now and 
then fixed itself on my hiding-place, so I whis- 
tled softly. The heron paused in his feather- 
combing and looked towards me. There was no 
fear in his glance, only mild interest. I sang, 
first sad music, then "Nancy Lee," "Pinafore," 
"Hold the Fort," everything I could think of, 
in fact, which might prompt him to action ; but 
he only stared, now over his beak, then under 
it. The latter method of ogling was very effec- 
tive, for the long bill was contemplating the 
skies, while the cold, calculating eyes stood out 
each side of its base and glared down across it 
until I seemed to feel their clamminess. From 
music I turned to animal language, and barked, 
mewed, mooed, brayed, whinnied, quacked, 
crowed, cackled, peeped, hooted, and cawed, 
until my throat was raw. He was clearly en- 
tertained, and showed no desire to leave me. 
At last I came down to plain English, suppos- 
ing that my voice undisguised by song would 
certainly alarm him, but to my great surprise 
he apparently did not associate the human voice 
with its owner in the slightest degree. In fact, 
he now seemed bored by my noise, and went on 
with his preening. Suddenly, in moving my 
foot, I snapped a small twig. Before there 



110 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

seemed to have been time for the sound to reach 
his brain, the heron was on the wing, and I saw 
him no more that day. 

At 8.30, as I was watching the big tree, a 
large, light-colored bird passed close to its trunk 
and plunged downward towards the deep pool 
at its foot. The sound of splashing water was 
followed by utter silence. After remaining mo- 
tionless for several minutes I crawled carefully 
towards the bank of the brook. The bushes 
were thick, and small dry twigs covered the 
ground. Their snapping could not be avoided, 
and just before I reached a point where I could 
see the water and the narrow strip of muddy 
beach, a heavy bird rose with a great beating 
of wings and flew up-stream. I broke through 
the cover, headlong, but the bird was out of 
si<rht. The surface of the stream was covered 
with small, soft feathers, which I gathered to- 
gether and dried. They appeared to be from 
the breast of a sandpiper. Who the murderer 
was will never be known, though I presume that 
it was a Cooper's hawk. 

My glimpse of this hawk, if such it was, re- 
minded me of an encounter between a sharp- 
shinned hawk and a flock of blue jays which I 
had seen at the tree the week previous. The 
hawk arrived when several flickers were in the 
tree and hurled himself upon them. They fled, 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. Ill 

calling wildly, and brought to their aid, first a 
kingbird, which promptly attacked the hawk 
from above, and then a flock of blue jays, which 
abused him from cover below. When the king- 
bird flew away, as he did after driving the 
hawk into the bushes for a few moments, the 
jays grew more and more daring in approaching 
the hawk. In fact they set themselves to the 
task of tiring him out and making him ridicu- 
lous. They ran great risks in doing it, fre- 
quently flying almost into the hawk's face; but 
they persevered, in spite of his ferocious at- 
tempts to strike them. After nearly an hour 
the hawk grew weary and edged off to the woods. 
Then the jays went up the tree as though it 
were a circular staircase, and yelled the news 
of the victory to the swamp. 

As the forenoon passed slowly by, there were 
periods when the tree was empty for ten min- 
utes or more at a time, but generally a flicker, 
cedar-bird, olive-sided flycatcher, blue jay, 
crow, or catbird was to be seen perched in 
some part of the great skeleton. At ten o'clock 
I shifted my place to avoid the heat of the sun, 
and to keep its light behind me. My new seat 
was in the heart of a tangle of bushes, and as 
I looked through the network of their stems I 
suddenly saw a bird's head, motionless. My 
glass aided me in recognizing the little creature 



112 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

as a red-eyed vireo sitting upon a twig. Close 
by it was a second vireo also perfectly passive. 
I watched them for a long time, and could see 
nothing but their eyes move. It is such moods 
as this, taking possession of birds, which make 
some parts of the day silent, and cause the 
woods to seem deserted by all their feathered 
tenants. Another occupant of the thicket was 
a yellow-bellied flycatcher, whose activity in the 
pursuit of small insects was tireless. He cer- 
tainly found enough to eat, for small insects 
have been unusually abundant this summer, 
while birds have been noticeably scarce near 
Chocorua. Some species, usually well repre- 
sented, have seemingly vanished, and others, 
quite numerous in average years, have been 
very sparingly represented. For instance, the 
summer has passed without my seeing either an 
oriole or a winter wren, while redstarts and 
chestnut-sided warblers, usually among the 
most numerous species, have been represented 
by a mere handful of birds. The supposed local 
causes of this dearth of small birds are a heavy 
snowfall, which occurred the last week in May, 
and a hailstorm, which did great damage just 
in the middle of the nesting period. Unusual 
numbers of birds are said to have been killed 
by spring storms in the Gulf States before the 
year's migration really began. 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAY. 113 

At eleven o'clock a flock of small birds moved 
rapidly across the meadow, and four of the num- 
ber passed through my covert. They were a 
chickadee and three Wilson's blackcaps. I 
wish the latter bird lived here in the breeding 
season, for it is a pretty, confiding, gentle little 
creature. The departure of these birds was has- 
tened by the appearance on the lake shore of a 
young man, a boy, and a dog. The man car- 
ried a gun, and the dog rushed about in an ex- 
cited way, doing his best in cur fashion to aid 
in the hunt. When the trio reached the brook 
at the point where it debouched upon the lake 
sand, the man cursed the stream for its width, 
and the boy, in a loud nasal voice, followed his 
example. They stood upon the farther side for 
several minutes pouring out blasphemy and filth 
until a sandpiper attracted their attention and 
their gun spoke sharply. The bird escaped, 
perhaps to die in the meadow grass, and again 
the two intelligent human beings invoked wrath 
upon the bird, the stream, the meadow, the dog, 
and the gun. Then they crossed the brook 
higher up, where it was narrower, and distance 
covered their conversation with a welcome veil. 
As long as the pleasant memories of that quiet 
day linger in my mind, so long will there be 
drawn through them a black line of disgust at 
the vileness of the two representatives of my 



114 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

own species who offered such a contrast to the 
purity of nature. 

From eleven until one o'clock there was almost 
unbroken stillness near the great tree. Now 
and then some one of the regular residents of 
the meadow spoke, a dragonfly buzzed past, a 
small pickerel stirred in the brook, or a frog 
said "wurro, wurrouh" and splashed in the still 
water among the reeds. The kingbirds broke 
the monotony by coming, three strong, with 
much noise and fluttering to take possession of 
the tree. One of them flew to the sand by the 
lake ripples and drank. Then all three came 
upon the lowest branches of the big tree and 
looked at the dark pool below. One flew 
obliquely against the water, striking it and 
dashing a thousand bright drops into the air. 
He rose chattering and returned to his perch, 
shaking himself. I thought he had aimed for a 
fly and struck the water unintentionally, but 
down he went again, making even more of a 
splash than before, and presently both the oth- 
ers followed his example at such frequent inter- 
vals that the pool had no time to smooth its 
ripples. This odd kind of bathing was contin- 
ued for ten minutes, during which time a cat- 
bird sneaked down upon the sand and watched 
the process silently but with evident interest. 
Later he saw me sitting motionless under the 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAT. 115 

bushes, and flew directly at me, turning sharply- 
just before reaching my head, and making a 
loud noise both by striking his wings against 
branches and by his harsh voice. If his pur- 
pose was to startle me he certainly succeeded. 

The afternoon was clear, still, and warm, and 
the birds were evidently drowsy. From two 
until after four nothing perched in the tree. A 
sandpiper amused me by his patient search for 
food, as he waded back and forth on the mud 
over which the brook spread as it entered the 
lake. For an hour he confined himself to a 
space less than six feet square and worked over 
almost every inch of it. Much of the time he 
merely prodded the mud gently with his long, 
quill-like bill, but occasionally he seemed to see 
something squirm, and then he pursued it 
quickly and stabbed more vigorously. Much 
of the time the water was above his knees, and 
sometimes he ran into deeper places, so that it 
lapped upon his breast. Twice he plunged his 
head and neck entirely under water, but his 
eyes seemed to need no wiping when they 
emerged as wide open as before. Sometimes he 
crossed his legs and stood like a camp-stool, 
with his thin props meeting their equally straw- 
like reflections in the brook. After a while a 
second sandpiper appeared, but his method was 
to travel rapidly along the water line, and he 
was soon out of siffht. 



116 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

It was not until nearly six o'clock that the 
tree became really populous again. Then the 
catbirds went upstairs on its branches, nickers 
and kingbirds occupied its top; a humming-bird 
buzzed in the face of a pewee who was perched 
fully thirty feet from the ground; a sapsucking 
woodpecker came and drummed for a moment, 
and finally a flock of cedar-birds rested in it for 
a while as they had in the morning. The sun set 
and night breathed upon the meadow. A single 
cedar-bird remained in the tip of the tree and 
drearily repeated his one dismal word. Below 
in the shadows the catbirds were restlessly 
mewing, and as it grew dark the lament of the 
hermits joined in the gloomy chorus. The sky 
was fair, and rosy lights flowed and ebbed in 
the clouds. The stars came, and in the distant 
pines a barred owl sounded his long trumpet 
note. A few minutes after seven, when cat- 
birds and hermits were silent for the night, I 
heard a solitary sandpiper whistling at the 
mouth of the brook. My glass brought his tiny 
form to view, and as I watched him, a second 
tattler ran along the gleaming sand and the 
whistling ceased. Suddenly they flew together 
as though startled, and the next moment I saw 
what I had supposed to be a bunch of pickerel- 
weed growing in the shallows move slowly east- 
ward." The object was several rods from the 



THE DEAD TREE'S DAT. 117 

shore, and moving across the mouth of the 
brook. Now it glided a few inches, then it 
paused. Ten minutes passed before it pro- 
gressed as many yards. It was the heron's 
ghostly form. When he reached the eastern 
shore a light flashed across the lake and a voice 
sounded. He flew. I rose to go, but as I 
crept out upon the sand I turned to take a last 
look at the tree, and saw there the heron, stand- 
ing on a high limb, black against the sky. 



MIGRATION. 

For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, 

Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew, 
And flowers put on a fairer hue, 
And everything was strange and new. 

The quaint story of Noah's gathering the 
animals into the ark is always linked in my 
mind with the Pied Piper, and with that strange 
turn in the tide of bird life which is called mi- 
gration. The marvelous music which charmed 
the rats and children of Hamelin town must 
have been used by Noah to call his creatures 
into the ark of safety, and it is still to be heard 
in the winds of autumn sighing through the 
Chocorua forests and calling the birds away to 
other lands. One day all is calm and serene; 
the next, though the sky is just as blue and the 
sunlight just as warm, something of unrest is in 
the air, and the birds are telling each other the 
story of the great journey. Songs are forgotten 
or sung only to greet the dawn and bless the 
night; nestlings are trained to flight and led 
silent journeys through field, forest, or ether 
after food ; new scenes are visited, and the weak 



■1 




MIGRATION. 119 

separated from the strong and left to die. Then, 
sometimes by day, sometimes by night, the hosts 
meet, drawn together by a force as irresistible 
and mysterious as magnetism, and finally the 
story of the great journey is written in fact once 
more. 

In the August mornings I hear the Swainson's 
thrush by the lake. He was not there a few 
days before, he was on the mountain-side. He 
is drifting southward, slowly at first, but feeling 
the thrill of the Pied Piper's music in his wings. 
All through the summer I have listened in vain 
for the nasal "quants, quank, quank," of the red 
nuthatch. Suddenly, in mid- August, I hear it 
on the mountain, and an hour or two later every 
flock of chickadees brings the northern migrant's 
call along with the jolly chorus of "dee, dee, 
dee." These chickadees, alert, courageous, tire- 
less, and generous, are the convoys of the warbler 
fleets. For an hour the silence of the forest 
will be broken only by the tiresome platitudes 
of the red-eyed vireo, the dry staccato of the 
harvest-fly, and the occasional whistle of a hyla. 
Then, far away, will be heard the faint "dee-dee " 
of the titmouse. It comes nearer, and presently 
a dozen or twenty little birds are seen hovering, 
darting, flitting, but steadily advancing, tree by 
tree, through the woods. Perhaps not more than 
one in ten will be a chickadee, yet it is the chick- 



120 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

adee which gives character and direction to the 
body. The guided flock of easy-going warblers 
and vireos, nuthatches and kinglets, drift on, 
feeding and frolicking, heedless of what it 
passes. 

If the observer "squeaks," or if an owl draws 
the attention of the passing birds, the chickadee 
comes to the front at once, with his sharp re- 
proving iterations, and his beady eyes snapping 
indignantly. Along with him come red-eyed 
and solitary vireos, nuthatches, golden-crested 
kinglets, black-throated blue warblers, Wilson's 
blackcaps, young chestnut-sided warblers, look- 
ing puzzlingly unlike their parents. Black- 
burnians, with throats aflame; black-throated 
greens, rich in spring tints of yellow and ten- 
der green ; black and white creepers, the tidiest 
of birds; the gay magnolias, redstarts, Cana- 
dians, and sober myrtle warblers. Sometimes 
a single flock contains nearly all of these cour- 
tiers of the woods, while others are composed 
almost entirely of a single species, as, for ex- 
ample, the black-throated greens, or the mag- 
nolias. 

In these same late August and early Septem- 
ber days the cherry and berry eaters gather 
together and travel in flocks. Robins by scores, 
sometimes by hundreds, combine with the cedar- 
birds and flickers and range over the country in 



MIGRATION. 121 

search of food. The flickers feed much of the 
time upon the ground among the berry -bushes, 
casting aside woodpecker habits and seeming 
more like starlings. The robins are sometimes 
with them upon the ground, but oftener in the 
wild cherry-trees with the cedar-birds, stripping 
bough after bough of its dark fruit. When the 
flock moves, the cedar-birds mass themselves 
and fly for a while as though linked together. 
Then, without apparent cause, part or the whole 
turn about and fly first this way, then that, per- 
haps coming back, after a few minutes, to the 
point of departure. When a flock of red cross- 
bills do this, they sprinkle the air and the earth 
with sweet notes ; but the cedar-birds have no 
joy in their one chilly whistle, and there is more 
of aimless, witless indecision in their flights 
than there is of romping. Whenever I come 
near one of their flocks, I scan them carefully, 
hoping to detect the white wing-bars of a Bo- 
hemian waxwing among them, yet it is more 
than likely that I may watch a lifetime without 
having the fortune to see in the flesh one of 
those rare vagabonds of the north. The roving 
habits of these birds and of the crossbills con- 
trast strangely with the simple steadfastness of 
the grouse, and the clock-like punctuality of 
many of the migrants. Something in that cold 
past with its glaciers and ice-crushed continents 



122 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

could explain the present temperaments of the 
wandering birds, but we may never know what 
that something is. Whether we are to know it 
or not, it is natural to have a feeling akin to 
pity for birds so lacking in home life. 

The winter wren is an amusing little migrant. 
He seems to have an underground railway of his 
own from the grim northern forest straight to- 
wards a milder clime. Like other underground 
ways, it has breathing holes, and out of these 
he occasionally pops his head and sputters at 
the observer. Sometimes he appears at an 
opening in a stone wall and scolds mankind for 
picking blackberries or plucking goldenrod; 
again he emerges from the darkness beneath a 
log in the swamp, and bustles about with the 
offensive energy of a special policeman. If he 
travels in company, the fact is not often made 
evident. He certainly seems too crusty for 
pleasant companionship on a long journey. 
One late September morning a winter wren flew 
into my hen-house and became my prisoner for 
a few hours. I placed him in a room and 
watched his efforts to escape. He flew with 
such speed that he made almost as much of a 
humming as a humming-bird. He clung to the 
woodwork, and hid in the curtains, but finally 
dropped to the floor and ran about like a mouse, 
hiding in corners or behind the legs of chairs. 



migration: 123 

Once or twice I caught him and stroked his 
head and neck. He was quiet enough while I 
touched him, but the moment my fingers left 
him, he slipped away out of sight. When 
taken out of doors and set free, he darted into 
the nearest stone wall and was seen no more. 

Birds of the upper air which feed on insects 
depart early. The eaves swallows and martins 
go while some mothers are still sitting on be- 
lated eggs. Bank swallows, barn swallows, 
night-hawks, and many of the tyrant flycatchers 
have vanished by the time the maples begin to 
flame upon the mountain-side. On the 3d of 
August, 1891, I saw about twenty martins in 
the dead tree. They were very noisy, and 
evidently excited. While watching them I saw 
in the zenith what looked like a cloud of insects. 
My glass showed it to be a large flock of birds, 
apparently swallows, moving in a great circle. 
After a time all but one of the martins in the 
tree flew away and were gone many minutes, 
the birds in the sky also disappearing. The 
martins returned, however, to the one which 
had not flown, and shortly after I again discov- 
ered the bird cluster in the sky. After fresh 
noise and flutterings of wings the martins 
finally flew, and no more were seen near the 
lake that season. Often in an August afternoon 
the lake will be apparently without birds, when 



124 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

in a twinkling the air will be full of graceful 
forms, and a flock of white-breasted swallows, 
barn swallows, or night-hawks will sweep over 
the blue water, rise, vanish over the meadow, 
reappear, fly towards the peak, wheel, return, 
and then perhaps speed away, not to greet the 
fair lake again until ice and snow have come 
and gone, and the number of their own light 
forms has been sadly diminished in the south. 

A field of buckwheat or other small grain is 
a magnet in the days when the birds are wan- 
dering. To it come the song sparrows, chip- 
ping sparrows, white-throats, j uncos, purple 
finches, field sparrows, goldfinches, and bay- 
winged buntings. They love to linger many 
days in the stubble; and when bird music is 
rare, their occasional songs are precious to the 
ear. If the field is approached softly there 
seems to be no life hidden in its midst, but sud- 
denly wings whirr noisily, and bird after bird 
flies up into the neighboring trees and bushes. 
Sparrows love fences, stone walls, and their ac- 
companying growths of berry -bushes and small 
trees. The latter are our New England sub- 
stitutes for the hedgerows of the Old World, and 
I believe the sparrow tribe takes as much com- 
fort in wall and briers as in hedge and ditch. 
The ditch is more than replaced by countless 
brooks, always clear and pure, and the wall 



MIGRATION. 125 

gives shade, shelter, food, and many a comfort- 
able perch. While driving along the narrow 
roads, bordered by many a mile of rough stone 
wall, the rattle of my wagon wheels startles the 
sparrows and finches from their cover. The 
bay-wing runs along the rut in front of the 
horse; the goldfinch undulates over the field, 
turns, and ripples back; the song sparrow 
mounts a bush-top and scolds ; the white-throat 
appears for a moment in a gap between the 
bushes and then goes on with his scratching in 
the leaves. So they go southward along the 
dusty roads, or the borders of dry field and 
dryer pasture. They are thousands strong, yet 
they look to be but a few each day, and the 
careless eye might think them always the same 
individuals from mid- August until Indian sum- 
mer. 

Sometimes alone, but often with the field 
sparrows and bay-wings, or later with the jun- 
cos, flocks of bluebirds travel the autumnal 
way. This year, on August 28, I saw a flock 
of twelve working slowly along a moor-like 
pasture ridge in company with double their 
number of sparrows. I have seen them by 
dozens in early October mingle with juncos and 
white-throats in gleaning over the stubble just 
left bare by the melting of a first snowfall. As 
they fly from spot to spot, they prefer to alight 



126 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

on the upper curve of a boulder, the tip of a 
cedar, or some equally favorable point for see- 
ing and being seen. They are comparatively 
silent, but now and then their sweet "cheruit" 
comes as a promise that after the long winter 
spring shall return, and with it their loveliness 
and courage. Many of the birds go south 
cheerfully, or indifferently, but the bluebirds 
seem to linger sadly and lovingly, and to feel 
that the migration is an enforced exile from the 
home they love best. 

The Chocorua country is not a good one for 
starlings and blackbirds; in fact, I have never 
seen but one bobolink nearer than Fryeburg 
intervales, twenty -five miles away ; and with all 
my watching, no crow blackbird or meadow 
lark has ever caught my eye in this region. 
The old residents say that years ago, when flax 
was cultivated hereabouts and grain-fields were 
broader, these birds were present in large num- 
bers. The first flock of rusty grackles which I 
have ever seen here appeared this year on a hill- 
top, about the middle of the afternoon of Sep- 
tember 22. The birds were either very tame 
or very weary, for they remained in the tops of 
some locust-trees, while I not only stood beneath 
them, but shook their tree, called to them, and 
clapped my hands. They maintained a steady 
flow of sotto voce music charming to the ear. 



MIGRATION. 127 

All migrants are not desirable visitors. An 
inroad of hawks is far from pleasant for the 
birds of a neighborhood, or for other migrants. 
All through the month of September hawks 
abound. They circle round the peak of Cho- 
corua, seemingly for the pleasure of it. Often 
a dozen sharp-shinned and young Cooper's 
hawks are in sight there at once. Sometimes 
great flocks of hawks pass across the sky, not 
circling, as the red-tailed and red-shouldered 
hawks are so fond of doing, but sailing straight 
before the wind like a fleet of mackerelmen 
running down the coast wing and wing. I once 
saw three hundred and thirty migrating hawks 
in one forenoon, most of them a thousand feet 
or less above the earth, but some so high that 
a powerful glass only just brought them into 
view. The stately progress of these birds, mov- 
ing many miles an hour without a wing-beat 
visible to the observer, is one of the wonders of 
nature. The Dead Tree is a resting-place for 
migrating hawks, eagles, and ospreys. I doubt 
not that by night it is used by owls, when they 
too move southward as their food grows scarce. 

In several different years I have seen my big 
blue heron sail away southward. In each in- 
stance it has been about four o'clock in the 
afternoon. Rising with slow and dignified 
flight, he makes two or three immense circles 



128 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

over the lakes, and then, as though partings 
were said, landmarks remembered, and bearings 
taken, he flies with strong and steady strokes 
towards the outlet of the Ossipee basin. This 
year, in August, ten night herons visited us at 
one time, remaining in the neighborhood two or 
three days. When disturbed by day, they rose, 
and, forming an orderly flock, flew away with 
military precision. The ducks and geese are, 
however, the best examples of well-drilled com- 
panies. Geese are not often seen here, although 
several were killed this spring in a small lake 
halfway between Chocorua and the Bearcamp. 
Wood duck and black duck begin to fly past us 
late in August, but their numbers are compara- 
tively insignificant, a flock of ten being un- 
usually large. In October and early November 
the wind-swept lakes are seldom without little 
companies of black ducks, sheldrakes, and their 
less common relatives. 

One of the most interesting of migrants is 
the loon, or great northern diver. Loons are 
said to breed in this vicinity on Whitton Pond, 
and they are seen now and then during all the 
summer months. It is on the edge of a north- 
east storm in September, when mackerel clouds 
deck the sky and the hazy sunlight spreads gold 
upon the ripples, that the migrating loon comes 
with the force of a cannon-ball, and plunges 



MIGRATION. 129 

into the lake's waters. His shrill laughter is 
taken up by all the mocking forests, and his 
deep and prolonged diving carries consternation 
to bass and pickerel. Restlessly he plows the 
ruffled water with his broad breast, and now 
and then he pounds the waves with his wings, 
raising his head high above them. When he 
flies, the water is churned into foam for many 
yards before his unwieldy body is finally raised 
into the air and placed under the full control 
of his powerful wings. Then he rises little by 
little, his wings moving faster and faster, until, 
after progressing half a mile, he has risen two 
or three hundred feet. Turning, he comes back, 
still rising, and passes in review the lake and 
forests which he is to leave. Again and again 
he tacks, on each new line rising farther from 
the earth, until at last, seen against the sky, he 
is but a pair of swiftly whirling wings set 
strangely far back on the long black line of his 
head, neck, and body. It is said that hunters 
have been killed by being struck by falling loons 
shot by them on the wing. 

Occasionally a stray sea-bird comes to the 
mountain lakes. Herring gulls have been seen 
on Chocorua Pond, a Wilson's tern was shot on 
August 30, 1890, on Ossipee Lake, and a year 
earlier, on September 30, a black tern remained 
half a day on my lonely lake. 



130 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

Late in September and in October there are 
days when the rush of migrating birds is like 
the stampede of a defeated army. I recall one 
such day, the 25th of September, 1891, when a 
torrent of migrants swept past my red-roofed 
cottage in the hour following sunrise. Before 
breakfast, and without going out of sight of my 
door, I saw over two hundred birds go by, in- 
cluding sixty pigeon woodpeckers, several sap- 
suckers, nuthatches, chickadees, crows, blue 
jays, robins, catbirds, seven kinds of warblers, 
solitary and red-eyed vireos, four kinds of spar- 
rows, a tanager, pewees, and a flock of cedar- 
birds. Most of these birds were on the trees, 
bushes, or ground, busily feeding, yet restlessly 
progressing southwestward, as though haunted 
by some irresistible impulse to keep in motion. 
The day was hot and still, and my notes men- 
tion the fact that we heard the splash of an 
osprey as he plunged into the lake, more than 
a quarter of a mile away. That evening the 
whippoorwills were singing their farewells in 
the soft moonlight. 

As the early October days glide by, these 
waves of migration come faster and faster, their 
acceleration seeming, as one looks back upon 
it, like the ever quicker throbbing of the air 
under the wing-beats of the grouse. Even as the 
drumming suddenly ceases and the summer air 



MIGRATION. 131 

seems still and heavy in the silence which fol- 
lows, so the migration suddenly ends, and the 
woods and fields become very still in the late 
Indian summer. Now and then the scream of 
a blue jay falls upon the ear, or a faint note of 
a tree sparrow comes from the weeds by the 
roadside ; but as a rule nature is dumb, and the 
leaves fall like tears. All the beauty of sky 
and autumn foliage cannot bring the birds back 
to the silent forest. Warm though the sun 
may be, and soft the haze on the cheek of Pas- 
saconaway, these charms cannot woo back the 
birds from their migration. The music of the 
Pied Piper has bewitched them, they are dream- 
ing of gushing waters and flowers of fairest hue ; 
and many a frosty, starlit night will pass before 
their wings beat once more in the clear Cho- 
corua air. 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 

When the harvest moon is large and the 
nights clear, I love to spend an evening hour or 
two under the great oak-trees on the shore of 
my lonely lake. The soft mists creep across 
the water, bats flit back and forth squeaking, 
the whippoorwills call to each other that the 
time for migration is near at hand, and some- 
times the voices of the barred owls wake weird 
echoes in the lake's curves. Sitting motionless 
in the black shadow, I am unseen and unsus- 
pected by the night creatures round me. Many 
feet move upon the dry leaves, and the flutter- 
ing of wings disturbs the still air. Measuring 
the evening from sunset until ten o'clock, it 
seems a period of more activity than the day. 
Hours roll by in the September sunlight with 
scarce a sign of life near the lake, but the com- 
ing of twilight is a signal for awakening. High 
in the oaks the gray squirrels are busy with the 
acorns. In the stillness of the night an acorn 
falling against one and another bunch of stiff 
leaves, finally striking upon the ground, seems 
to make an unduly loud noise. The fine squeak 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 133 

of a bat might pass unnoticed in the daytime, 
but in the gloom it carries far and comes upon 
the ear sharply. 

In these hours the ground gives up its cave- 
dwellers, and their soft feet rustle the leaves in 
all the forest and by every brookside. From 
the ledges of Chocorua, foxes by dozens descend 
upon the surrounding farms and search for mice 
and other prey. It is the light snowfall which 
betrays the great number of these wary ma- 
rauders, and not the secretive leaves of autumn, 
upon whose dry surfaces the fox-tread makes no 
imprint. From his den under the screes the 
hedgehog wanders through the woods or seeks 
the orchard. The skunk, too, is abroad, poking 
his snout into ant-hills or among mouldering 
leaves where insects lie hidden. It is neither 
fox nor skunk which makes the soft pattering 
just behind the old oak against which I lean. 
A smaller wanderer than they comes there, and 
as surely as gnomes have settled in America 
this must be one of their haunts. I feel certain 
of it when a squeaky little whisper follows the 
pattering, or when occasionally a tiny form darts 
across a patch of moonlight near the edge of the 
water. 

In these September hunting-days I have left 
the grouse to feed undisturbed among the black- 
berries, and the hare to dream away the sunlit 



134 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

hours in his form among the swamp evergreens. 
Gnome-hunting has been my pastime, and so 
low is our human estimate of the character and 
usefulness of these tiny creatures that my con- 
science has not given the faintest bit of a twinge 
when I have brought home dead gnomes from 
field, meadow, mountain, and forest. Our 
gnomes are not all of one kind, and when I 
started with my game-bag in the September sun- 
light I did not feel sure what manner of elf I 
might bring home with me. Setting out early 
on the morning of the 12th, I dashed the dew 
from the brakes as I crossed an open pasture 
on the way to my lonely lake. The brakes were 
growing brown, yet we had had no frost, and 
the equinox was still ten days distant. The 
sumacs were gorgeous in green, scarlet, and or- 
ange, waiting for the first rain or wind to hurl 
to the ground half their gay leaves. As they 
hung motionless in the sunlight, they seemed 
brilliant enough for the tropics. Asters and 
goldenrod joined them in painting part of the 
picture with high colors, and so did the maples 
on the high ledges of the mountain where a 
bear-hunter's fire raged last October. A bit of 
woodbine climbing up the maple trunk gleamed 
like flames, mountain-ash berries were full of the 
same fire, and the clustered fruit of the hobble- 
bush glowed in the midst of its maroon and 
crimson foliage. 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 135 

What means this decking of the earth in au- 
tumn with scarlet and purple, crimson and gold, 
russet and orange? The flowers of the spring- 
time are full of joyous color, in order that the 
wandering bee and butterfly may aid in their 
fertilization. The bird gleams with color as 
the glow-worm gleams with fire, that his mate 
may not forget him in the mazes of the life- 
dance. The autumn is the season of ripening, 
of the gathering of harvests, of the decay of the 
earthly, and the creation of that which shall 
endure. Are these colors only the emblems of 
death, the garlands upon the pall, or are they 
the signals which Nature hangs on high to call 
her forces into ranks for the battle against ex- 
tinction and in favor of persistent life? Surely 
the berry which by its brilliancy of color calls 
the bird to it, in order that it may be eaten and 
its seeds carried afar, is as wise as the flower 
which by its tints and perfume attracts the bee 
and secures fertilization. Perhaps the tree 
which blazes with autumn color is avoided by 
insects whose instinct teaches them to shun colors 
in contrast to their own. 

Just beyond the sumacs is the stump of a pre- 
historic pine. It has lasted generations since 
its towering pillar fell and sank year by year 
deeper into the soil. Its hard gray walls look 
as though they might endure half a century 



136 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

more of snow and sunshine. Gnomes live under 
that stump, and the first of my traps was set at 
their cave archway. Kneeling down behind the 
clustering blackberry briers, I could see the 
archway just at the head of the opening between 
two of the great buttress roots of the stump. 
Moss was growing at the threshold, ferns over- 
hung the doorway, and a tiny path led through 
the grass from the arch into the dry pasture be- 
yond the briers. Yes, the trap had been sprung, 
and crushed beneath its cruel springs was a gray 
gnome. His eyes were large and dark. His 
coat was of soft gray, and his waistcoat snowy. 
His hands and feet were very white and his elfin 
ears mischievously large and erect. The name 
of this gnome is quite musical, — Hesperomys, 
the evening gnome. 

In a deep hollow between wooded banks runs 
the pasture brook. It comes from the forest- 
clad mountain-side, and flows to a dark swamp, 
beyond which is the lake. Gnomes live by the 
brook, both in the hollow and in the swamp. 
Nine traps were set in the hollow and eighteen 
in the swamp. These traps are, with true Yan- 
kee originality, named "cyclones," and they are 
nearly perfect as engines of destruction. Upon 
a small square of tin are hinged two rectangles 
of stiff wire, so attached to strong springs that 
they naturally lie flat upon the square of tin. 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 137 

One rectangle is smaller than the other so that 
it just lies within it. The trap is set by raising 
the rectangles until they make a tent-like frame, 
and then securing them by a catch. The best 
lure for gnomes is whole corn, which is placed 
near the centre of the square of tin in a tiny 
cup suspended by a lever to the catch which 
holds the trap open. The gnome steps softly 
through the wire rectangles and tries to lift the 
grain from the cup. Woe to him if he presses 
ever so lightly upon the side of the cup, for if 
it is depressed, and the other end of the lever 
moved, the catch is cast free and the rectangles 
fall together with such force as to crush any 
small creature which stands below them. 

The nine traps set by the brook were in groups 
of three. As I drew near the first group, I 
looked for broken twigs and a scrap of white 
cotton tied to a branch, my signals to show where 
the traps were placed. Bent twigs with their 
leaves slightly withered and drooping are readily 
seen at a long distance. The first three traps 
were set at a point where the banks of the brook 
were steep, and the level moss near the water 
only a narrow belt. At one place a mossy log 
crossed this level, a mouldering stump crowned 
with ferns flanked it, and a big boulder raised 
a wall of granite parallel with the stream. Just 
across the brook was another long log covered 



138 AT THE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

with moss, violet leaves, and rue. One trap was 
on this log, one by the boulder close to a little 
hole running under it, and the third near the 
mouldering stump. At first as I stood in the 
midst of the traps I could see none of them. 
The corn scattered near had been carried away 
or eaten, and the strings by which the traps 
were tied to stakes were not where I remembered 
to have left them. Suddenly I saw one trap. 
It was sprung and drawn away among the leaves. 
Something was in it, something I had never 
before seen, a creature more beautiful than any 
squirrel, as graceful as a swallow and as sugges- 
tive of speed and lightness. I knelt over this 
slender, brightly-clad gnome, and released his 
lifeless body from the trap. His cobweb-like 
whiskers were wonderfully long, his coat was of 
pale straw color and brown, his waistcoat of 
purest white. No monkey has a tail proportion- 
ally longer than the seemingly endless white- 
tipped appendage of Zapus insignis, this jump- 
ing gnome of the mountain streams. Exquisite 
creature, I thought, how can I have lived so 
long among woods and brooks without suspect- 
ing your presence? But for a "cyclone" I 
might never have known that such a being ex- 
isted. 

The other two traps were sprung, one con- 
taining a second Zapus, and the third a gray 





TWO KINDS OF GXOMES 
Hesperomys (above) and Zapus (below) 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 139 

Jlesperomys. Similar fortune had attended the 
remaining traps by the brook, three containing 
specimens of Zapus, two of Hesperomys, and 
one a large mole with fur as fine as the softest 
silk velvet. I pushed on eagerly to the series 
of traps in the swamp. 

On the way I crossed a strip of level pasture 
over which a grove of gray birches is rapidly 
spreading year by year. Several of them are 
bent so that their upper branches sweep the 
ground. They are victims of the snow and ice 
storms of winter, and, unlike the Arlington 
cedars, they are not resilient enough to recover 
an erect position. In the heart of the grove, a 
family of sapsucking woodpeckers had been at 
work in one of their "orchards." Eight trees 
bore marks of their mischievous tapping, and in 
the two principal trees many hundreds of holes 
had been made by them. Their thirst is as 
insatiable as Mulvaney's, but I supposed that 
before this time they had wearied of their sum- 
mer fountains. Not so ; one of them was hitch- 
ing around the drills, dipping as persistently as 
in early July, and bees buzzed near him, enjoy- 
ing their share of the tree's sweets. Restrain- 
ing my impatience to see the swamp traps, I 
watched long for a humming-bird to visit the 
drills, but none came, thus confirming my im- 
pression that they not only arrive in New Eng- 



140 AT THE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

land later than the sapsuckers, but that they 
migrate southward earlier. 

While I waited under the birches, a gray 
squirrel came tripping over the grass and 
through the brakes. His great brush was not 
carried over his back, but in an arch behind 
him. His approach was so noisy that at first I 
thought a dog was coining towards me, but his 
voice betrayed him. " Cluck, cluck, cluck, deck, 
deck, deck, deck, dTekr If a "cyclone" had 
been choking him he could not have made 
sounds any more queer. When at last he dis- 
covered me, he lowered his tail and undulated 
very softly away. 

The first of the second series of traps was set 
on the slope leading down towards the moist bed 
of the swamp. It contained one of the white- 
footed gray gnomes. The next three were 
empty. Number five was in the darkest part 
of the swamp on a huge upturned stump whose 
twisted roots, looking like the arms of a devil- 
fish, reached far into the air. The trap was 
sprung, and the gnome in it was as new to my 
eyes as Zapus had been. Coarse, chestnut- 
brown hair, in parts almost as bright as red 
mahogany, small eyes, conspicuous ears, and a 
tail so short that it seemed only a stump of 
something more satisfactory, were the conspicu- 
ous points in this gnome. His name, as I later 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 141 

learned, was Evotomys, the long-eared gnome. 
His rich coloring matched to perfection the de- 
cayed hemlock stump in which he lived, and 
harmonized with the brown bark of pines and 
the stained waters of the swamp brooks. In the 
sunlight, or upon the sand by the brookside, he 
would have been conspicuous. Where he lay he 
looked like a fragment of the reddish wood 
under him. 

Five more of his tribe, and a tiny shrew, only 
three inches long, were found in the remaining 
swamp traps. One of the gnomes had been 
nearly devoured as he lay in the trap, the parts 
remaining being skin, feet, tail, and a small 
portion of the head. I suspected a big mole of 
being the ghoul. On my way home I looked 
in a trap set under a small foot-bridge which 
spanned a damp spot in a mowing-field. The 
victims here — for two had been caught at 
once — were of the family Arvicola, the sturdy 
gnomes of the fields. Their eyes were very 
small, their ears almost concealed by their 
coarse, dark-brown hair, and their bodies awk- 
wardly but strongly built. They are the farm- 
ing gnomes. 

On September 17, I walked from Berry's to 
the Swift River intervale, over the once "lost 
trail," now nearly completed as a broad bridle- 
path and winter road. I took twenty-five 



142 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

"cyclones" with me and set them at the most 
favorable spots along the way. Brook cross- 
ings, big, moss-grown stumps or logs, boulders 
overhanging springs or rivulets, and old log- 
ging camps were among the places which seemed 
to me likely to be frequented by gnomes. As I 
was not to return until the next day, a night 
would intervene to give the little cave-dwellers 
time to smell the corn and to inspect and spring 
the traps. 

The intervale was very beautiful as it lay 
tranquil in the autumn haze, but the memories 
of last Christmas-time had a charm about them 
which even the foretaste of Indian summer 
could not equal. Snow adds greatly to the dig- 
nity and grandeur of our New England moun- 
tains, making them more akin to the Alps, per- 
petual in their wintry covering. Chocorua, 
always a reminder of the Matterhorn, is much 
more like it when clad in ice, and rose-tinted 
by the morning sun. Even Swift River, framed 
in meadow brakes, waving osmundas, and gay 
scarlet maples, seemed less sparkling than when 
set in ice and overhanging banks of pure white 
snow. 

As night came, coldness suggestive of winter 
crept over the great plain. The first light frost 
came caressingly in the still night hours and 
fell upon the pumpkin vines and the delicate 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 143 

ferns by the roadside, so that morning saw 
them wither away and die in the early sun- 
beams. With the dawn came many bird-notes. 
Crows, jays, flickers, red nuthatches, chicka- 
dees, golden kinglets, robins, cedar -birds, and 
goldfinches all made their voices heard. In the 
bushes by the road, Maryland yellow-throats 
mingled with various migrating sparrows, and 
among the spruces dozens of warblers flitted 
joyously back and forth, saying little, perhaps 
because nuthatches and red-eyed vireos said too 
much. Swallows had gone, but grace of flight 
was shown by hawks of various kinds which 
circled, soared, or shot past on even wing. The 
fickle crossbills, present a year ago this week in 
large numbers, were nowhere to be seen. 

Sabba Day Falls were even grander than I 
remembered them to be, and although nothing 
could surpass in loveliness the icicles, frozen 
spray, masses of snow, and other paraphernalia 
of winter which had surrounded them in Decem- 
ber, their present dress of tender green and 
brown, relieved by autumnal colors and crowned 
by a cloudless sky of purest blue, was wonder- 
fully fair to look upon, and to lay away in the 
mind for weary days when brick walls and 
English sparrows should replace the wilderness 
and its warblers. 

It was high noon when I turned my back on 



144 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Carrigain and Bear and climbed the ridge 
towards Paugus • valley. Would the traps be 
sprung? The question gave speed to my foot- 
steps, which might otherwise have lagged by 
spring or brookside, for the day was meltingly 
warm and no breeze came over the Paugus ram- 
parts. The first trap was near the top of the 
ridge, under a huge boulder. It was two miles 
from the nearest house in the intervale, and 
more than double that distance from Berry's 
or any other inhabited dwelling in Tamworth. 
Perhaps gnomes did not live in spots so remote 
from man and his grain-fields. The trap was 
sprung. Evotomys had found it and perished. 
The next one was sprung, and a second long- 
eared victim lay in it. So with the third and 
fourth, set at intervals of many rods. The 
fifth was sprung, but empty; the sixth con- 
tained a gray Hesperomys ; the seventh another 
Evotomys. I was now in the deep, dark valley 
between the northern ridges of Paugus and 
Chocorua. Three miles and a half of the 
roughest mountain woodland lay between this 
spot and tilled land, yet animal life was so 
abundant that it seemed to make no difference 
where I set my traps and scattered my corn; 
gnomes were everywhere waiting. 

Out of twenty-five traps, fifteen held victims 
and six others were sprung, but empty. One 



TRAPPING GNOMES. 145 

of the slain was a chipmunk, another a mole. 
Of the remainder, three were long-tailed gray 
Ilesperomys, and ten were red-backed Evoto- 
mys. The latter are clearly the most numerous 
inhabitants of the dark evergreen forests, but 
they are also to be found near secluded farm 
buildings in spots where the fulvous Ilespero- 
mys is the prevailing sprite. Among these 
gnomes of the woods and fields, all true Ameri- 
can species, a European intruder is found. In 
some thickly settled places he has done among 
gnomes what the European sparrow has done 
among birds, elbowed himself into exclusive 
possession. When found in a trap, or seen 
scampering along the pantry shelf, this gnome 
is called, in vulgar English, a mouse. 



OLD SHAG. 

Old Shag, Toadback, or Paugus Mountain 
stands in the Sandwich range between Cho- 
corua on the east and Passaconaway on the 
west. It is better armed against attack by 
mountain climbers than any of its neighbors, 
and this in spite of the fact that in elevation it 
is the lowest of the range. Its defenses consist 
of numerous radiating ridges covered with dense 
growths of spruce and crossed by belts of "har- 
ricane," miles of cliffs so forbidding as to repel 
any but determined assault, and ravines choked 
by debris of rock and fallen forest. No path of 
any kind leads to its top, and when its summit 
is gained, none of the familiar marks indicating 
previous visits by egg-eating, initial-cutting 
tourists are discoverable. 

Like most impregnable fortresses, Paugus has 
its weak spot. There is a way to reach its south- 
ern summit without touching a "harricane," 
climbing a precipice, or struggling through 
more than a few rods of spruce jungle. More- 
over, on this way the traveler is sung to by one 
of the most musical of streams, while his eyes 



OLD SHAG. 147 

are charmed by the ever-changing beauties of a 
series of as exquisite cascades as are to be found 
in the White Mountains. It is true that in 
midsummer the brook is so reduced in size that 
its chief charm is seriously lessened, but if the 
time chosen for ascent is in spring, autumn, or 
after a heavy summer rain, the falls will be 
found at their best. 

On the morning of September 15, a party of 
four persons entered the "lost trail," leading 
from Berry's to the Swift River intervale. A 
heavy rain had fallen during the whole of the 
preceding day, and Paugus River, with all its 
sons and daughters, grandchildren brooks, and 
great-grandchildren rivulets, made the forest 
resound with the music of innumerable singing 
falls and rapids. Following the old trail for 
two miles, the party reached a spot where a 
good-sized stream appeared flowing eastward 
from the great hollow in the eastern flank of 
Paugus. Leaving the bridle-path at this point, 
and walking nearly due west, the explorers fol- 
lowed the branch towards its source. As the 
region was reported to be thickly set with bear- 
traps, the party walked in Indian file, while 
their leader sounded and punched every foot of 
moss and soft leaf mould with his stout staff. 
The traps used by the hunters on these moun- 
tains are murderous inventions, consisting of 



148 AT TEE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

two huge steel jaws lined with sharp teeth. 
The trap, when set, is buried beneath a layer 
of moss. If a bear or man steps between the 
opened jaws, thereby pressing a pan which 
frees the" two powerful springs below the jaws, 
the trap closes instantaneously, the teeth are 
locked in the flesh, cutting sinews and crushing 
bone. A man thus caught is maimed for life, 
if, indeed, he does not die from starvation and 
pain before he can be released from his horrible 
imprisonment. A bear usually drags the trap 
until its anchor catches in a tree, or his strength 
is exhausted. Sometimes he gnaws off his foot 
and crawls away bleeding and crippled. The 
trap weighs from twenty-five to forty pounds, 
and although usually marked in such a way that 
its owner can recognize it, no name betrays the 
identity of the trapper. 

The places chosen by the bear hunter for set- 
ting his traps are those to which a bear is in the 
habit of going often. On damp and mossy 
spots the great footprints of the brute show 
plainly, and when the trapper is satisfied that 
Bruin walks that way habitually, he cuts out a 
square of moss upon which the footprint is 
plainly visible, places his open trap in the hole, 
restores the moss with great care, and goes 
away for a week, or even longer, visiting other 
traps, some of which may be many miles away. 



OLD SHAG. 149 

If signs of any proper kind were placed near 
the traps to warn the passer-by of his peril, there 
would be small reason to complain of bear -trap- 
ping, but unhappily no such signals are dis- 
played, and man, if he wanders in wild places, 
is in as much danger as the bears. The brook 
bed which our party of four was ascending is 
one of the best grounds for bears in all the 
Sandwich range. No wonder, then, that we 
watched and sounded anxiously for hidden 
traps. 

As we walked westward into the hollow in 
the side of Paugus, the ground rose rapidly and 
the level land on the edges of the stream soon 
gave way to steeply sloping banks. For beech, 
birch, and maple were substituted spruce, bal- 
sam fir, and hemlock; the rapids of the brook 
changed to falls ; glimpses of sky were replaced 
by occasional peeps at spruce-capped gray cliffs 
hanging high above us, and we felt as though if 
we kept on we should soon enter the black inte- 
rior of a vast cavern, unless some unseen avenue 
to light and air appeared. The barometer 
showed that we had climbed nearly a thousand 
feet, when suddenly there opened before us a 
view of a succession of high, steeply-sloping 
ledges, polished by rushing water and festooned 
with delicate mosses. A sheet of clear and 
sparkling water, stained a rich hemlock brown 



150 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

by the inoss beds through which it had filtered, 
poured in quivering folds over the rock. Stand- 
ing by the side of the pool at the foot of the 
lowest incline, we could see four of these smooth 
ledge faces rising one behind another above us. 
Climbing to their top, we saw as many more still 
higher, and beyond them all, twin cascades 
gleamed through the trees, as they fell from a 
ledge in the middle of which a mass of black 
spruces and huge gray rocks seemed to form an 
island poised in the air between the two halves 
of the torrent. 

Nearly a thousand feet above this twin fall, 
yet so close beyond it that my companions al- 
most despaired of further progress up the moun- 
tain, was a wall of gray rock suspended between 
the sky and the tree-tops. It was the last re- 
doubt of the impregnable Paugus. Was there 
a rift in its apparently solid face ? Yes, I knew 
that there must be, because years before I had 
come down this ravine from the summit and 
had found no obstacle to gradual and easy de- 
scent. While passing the falls, we used the 
barometer to ascertain their approximate height, 
and found a difference of two hundred and fifty 
feet between the level of the pool at their foot 
and that of the stream above the twin cascades. 
The several inclines down which the water shot 
in rippling sheets were each fifty or sixty feet 




CHOCORI'A SEEN FROM THE SIDE OF FAUGUS 



OLD SB AG. 151 

long and about twenty -five feet in perpendicular 
rise. With a stream twice or three times the 
volume of this brook, Paugus Falls would take 
rank as among the most beautiful in New Eng- 
land. Even as they are, they deserve a place 
in song instead of obscurity in an abnost un- 
known corner of a pathless mountain. 

Not far above the twin cascades, the brook 
formerly shot over a polished ledge almost steep 
enough to form a perfect fall. Here a very 
unusual and interesting change had been worked 
in the rock and the course of the water by the 
action of frost. Just at the point where the 
polished rock bed of the stream was steepest, a 
crack had opened at right angles with the cur- 
rent. Of course water had rilled this fissure 
and deepened it until in some winter night a 
sound of rending must have startled the forest 
and echoed afar down the gorge. The front of 
the ledge, measuring twenty yards or more from 
side to side and nearly half that distance from 
top to bottom, broke from its ancient foundation 
and slipped forward about eighteen inches, thus 
forming a perpendicular crevasse sixty feet long 
and twenty feet deep. Into this the stream 
plunged and vanished from sight. Standing 
just below the crevasse and looking up the 
smooth face of the ledge, I could see the eager 
water coming towards me, hurrying forward its 



152 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

amber masses, bubbles, sheets of foam, and 
yellow leaves dropped by the ripening trees. 
As it seemed about to hurl itself upon me and 
sweep me down its bed, it disappeared. 

When the water reached the bottom of the 
crevasse, it turned aside and flowed at right 
angles to its course until a fault in the rock 
allowed it to steal out into the daylight. The 
crevasse was full of sounds, and amid the 
splashing, gurgling, and roaring of the water, 
the ear could fancy that it detected wild cries, 
sobs, and moans. 

Above this rift and cavern of wild waters 
came many a rod of steep climbing. Again 
and again an impassable cliff seemed to bar our 
way, but each time the stream showed us how, 
by a zigzag or a long diagonal, we could avoid 
the abrupt face of the rock and find a way to a 
higher level. Finally, after nearly four hours 
of climbing we found ourselves in a moist and 
mossy hollow between two of the summits of the 
mountain. Northward the rocks rose abruptly 
to the wooded crest of the highest ridge, south- 
ward they rose to the dome-shaped ledge which 
forms the best height for observation, wind and 
fire having left it as bald as an egg. It was 
impossible to cross the moist hollow dry shod, 
for at no point was it less than a rod wide and 
in parts it was forty or fifty yards from ledge to 



OLD SHAG. 153 

ledge. The brown water stood in pools amid 
the sphagnum beds and between the stems of 
trees. Several paths led downward between 
the low spruces to these pools, but we shunned 
them. Human feet had not trodden them, un- 
less, indeed, the bear hunter had passed that way 
and set his traps directly across them. In one 
place I saw where a bear had recently walked 
across the sphagnum, leaving the imprint of 
his huge foot clearly stamped upon the moss. 

The view from the dome of Paugus was au- 
tumnal in tone. Great masses of cold clouds 
were sweeping across the blue sky, urged for- 
ward by a blustering northwest wind. Wher- 
ever the spruce growth upon the mountains was 
interrupted by deciduous trees, delicate shades 
of red, yellow, or russet lay in patches between 
the sombre tones of the evergreens. In spots 
brilliant scarlet maples stood out boldly, but as 
a rule the new colors were not pronounced but 
merely suggestive of the gorgeous transforma- 
tion soon to be perfected. In the hollows, es- 
pecially those in which "harricanes" had been 
overgrown by mountain ash, sumac, and similar 
perishable wood, the autumnal tints were more 
prevalent and stronger. The only flowers upon 
the mountain-top were a few small asters with 
highly scented leaves, and a goldenrod (macro- 
phylla) with large blossoms and coarse leaves. 



154 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

Old Shag is not high enough to rival Cho- 
corua or Passaconaway with its views, but it 
affords the only really satisfactory chance of 
studying those two mountains from a point be- 
tween them. Chocorua varies strangely in its 
outlines from different points of view. From 
the south it looks like a huge lion couchant; 
from the Albany intervale it is an irregidar 
ridge resembling a breaking wave ; from Paugus 
it seems more like a giant fortress, with bat- 
tered ramparts lifted high against the sky. A 
slide, invisible from other points, is seen to ex- 
tend from the western foot of the peak far down 
into the forests of the Paugus valley. North of 
it a ridge densely grown with old spruce runs 
from the peak northwestward. It is one of the 
few parts of Chocorua not given up to deciduous 
trees. Beyond it rises the Champney Falls 
brook which flows northward into Swift River. 

Passaconaway from the Bearcamp valley is 
one of the most perfect of pyramids ; from Pau- 
gus it is a rough hump of sinister outline and 
color. The spruces upon it grow so thickly 
that it is hard to force a way through them, yet 
they spring from sides so steep that it seems a 
marvel that any soil or vegetation can cling to 
the rocks. A slide of great length shows its 
scar upon the eastern face, and serves to em- 
phasize the fact that this side of Passaconaway 



OLD SHAG. 155 

is really less of a slope than of a continuous 
precipice nearly three thousand feet from sum- 
mit to plain. In these almost inaccessible for- 
ests several birds from the Canadian fauna are 
occasionally found. I have seen there in sum- 
mer both kinds of the three-toed woodpeckers; 
Canada grouse or spruce partridges have been 
shot there this autumn, and the moose-bird, or 
Canada jay, is occasionally seen near the lum- 
ber camps. 

In descending a mountain in the afternoon 
which has been climbed in the morning, many 
new effects of light and shade, color, and even 
of outline, are observable. This may be puz- 
zling to the guide who does not thoroughly know 
his path, but it is the one redeeming feature in 
a homeward scramble to those who are weary 
enough to regard their second view of a moun- 
tain-side as an anti-climax to the triumphant 
ascent of a new peak. Paugus Falls were more 
beautiful with the pallor of the afternoon around 
them, than they were with the southeastern sun 
shining into their rushing bubbles. They were 
whiter and the water consequently looked 
greater in volume. Again we wondered how 
such rare beauty could have been hidden so 
long in an untrodden forest, and, wondering, 
we blazed the trees so that those who might 
come after us could follow without perplexity 



156 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

the easy and beautiful way which we had been 
fortunate enough to find. 

When we reached the old trail, about five 
o'clock, the woods seemed dark and the pene- 
trating coolness of an autumn night was in the 
air. Twenty minutes later we emerged in the 
blackberry tangle by the abandoned saw-mill, 
and found wagons and warm wraps waiting for 
us. As we looked back towards the golden 
sunset, the dark dome of Old Shag stood boldly 
out against the sky. Fire and wind had left 
scars upon its face, and nature originally made 
it so rough in outline that "Toadback" is tell- 
ingly descriptive of its shape. Toads have 
their jewels, and so has Paugus, hidden iu the 
shadows of its eastern flank. 



MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 

No matter how tightly the body may be 
chained to the wheel of daily duties, the spirit 
is free, if it so pleases, to cancel space and to 
bear itself away from noise and vexation into 
the secret places of the mountains. Well it is 
for him who labors early and late at the desk, 
if his soul can thus spread its wings and soar 
to deep forests, clear lakes, and rugged moun- 
tain peaks, drawing from memory, imagination, 
and sweet forecast, something to insph'e itself 
to patient action, and something to strengthen 
the heart in its wish to do its appointed task 
manfully. As these bright October days slip 
by and my wheel of daily duties spins round 
and round in that granite prison called Univer- 
sity Hall, my memory takes me back to fair 
Chocorua. I remember the 6th of October in 
the year 1884. The sun struggled through soft 
gray clouds and gazed upon a world of magical 
opposites. Every maple in a hundred town- 
ships blazed with scarlet or gold ; yet soft and 
cold, wrapping the earth from Chocorua' s horn 
to the sand at the lake shore, the first snow of 



158 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

autumn sparkled in the rays of the rising sun. 
Skies of blue, forests of fire, fields of snow, — 
those were the delights of that matchless Octo- 
ber dawning. 

If the wheel grows too noisy I come back from 
these visions to my desk and its papers, and 
open dozens of letters from all over our broad 
country, from Europe, Japan, Mexico, and from 
distant India, whence some Harvard soldier of 
the Cross writes to ask tidings of his alma 
mater. In his day every John knew every 
William, and the roll of the University never 
climbed beyond the hundreds. Now the ques- 
tioner at my side wonders how near we shall 
come to having three thousand students this 
year; while the prophet declares that in five 
years or less Harvard will have distanced Cam- 
bridge and Oxford, and become the greatest 
English-speaking University in the world. 
Even now her students do not all speak Eng- 
lish. Aside from the scores of American 
youths who hear only light-weight silver dollar 
English at home, and who learn little that is 
better at school, there are many who come to 
Harvard from far-away foreign homes. The 
tall Bulgarian with his dark eyes full of poetry 
and fire; the patient Russian Jew, exiled from 
a cruel land, and struggling night and day to 
win an education and a fortune in the home of 




CROWLAXDS, FORMERLY THE OLD DOE FARM 



MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 159 

the free; the dashing young Norwegian, with 
winning, deferential manners and a light in his 
blue eyes which speaks of his own glaciers and 
dark fjords; the gifted Japanese, absorbing 
philosophy or science with such readiness as to 
make his slower American competitor blush 
with shame; the angular Armenian, with his 
keen, thin face and nervous hands; the self- 
possessed Costa Rican, the moody Icelander 
and his taciturn but clear-headed neighbor from 
Newfoundland, — all are beside me taking turns 
with their American fellow-students in hurry- 
ing my wheel until the day is done. 

When the day is done, and pale sunset colors 
lie in the sky behind the witching iron tracery 
in the great western gateway, my soul goes 
northward again into that other October when 
the early snow melted, and the winds blew in 
the fair Chocorua land. I go back to a gusty 
afternoon when we rowed our boat the length 
of the lakes and landed upon the silent shore of 
the old Doe farm. It was our first visit to the 
white sand of that beach, to the little footpath 
leading upward through the orchard, and to the 
tumble-down cottage with its huge chimney, 
in which the swifts had found no smoke for 
twenty long years. Our first visit, — yet now 
the anchor of life is so strongly fixed on that 
shore, and the family fairies so firmly domiciled 



160 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

on that hearth, that our first voyage of discov- 
ery seems as far off as the time when "Kit 
Colombus sailed from the Papal See." 

We wandered through the rooms of the cot- 
tage, peeped at the sky through the cracks in 
its roof, noted the pewee's nest on the wains- 
coting in the east room, and whirled the old 
flax-wheel which stood in the dark attic. Then, 
passing the ancient maples behind the great 
barn, we strolled on and on through the pas- 
tures until a faint path led us to the lonely lake 
among the dingles, almost at the foot of Cho- 
corua. Softly descending the steep path to the 
edge of the green water, we saw five black ducks 
rise from the lake and fly from us over the oaks. 
The rush of their wings is in my ears to this 
day, and my eyes recall the clouds which loomed 
over the peak and swept down upon the lake, 
bringing much cold wind and a little rain. 
From the storm-clouds a small hawk came cir- 
cling down towards the troubled water and 
tossing birches. As he soared above us, seem- 
ingly protesting against our coming into the 
charmed vale, I shot him. The strong wings 
gave one spasmodic beat, the fierce head fell 
forward, and the body shot downward and 
struck the sand at our feet. We had claimed 
dominion by force of arms, and when we next 
saw the lake, it was ours in law. 



MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 161 

The wheel turns fastest in the University 
prison house when pale boys and gaunt young 
men come to me with confidences of their life- 
long hope to come to fair Harvard, of mothers' 
sacrifices, and fathers' toil, of the parson's 
chiding against the influence of the non -secta- 
rian college, and the schoolmaster's prophecy 
that Cambridge will be all proud looks and cold 
hearts, and finally of their own determination 
to work their way through, no matter what the 
cost in comfort and energy. It is the same 
soul-stirring story, whether it speaks from the 
butternut-colored coat from Georgia, the coarse 
gray homespun from Cape Breton, or the shiny, 
long-tailed black frock from Nebraska. Be- 
seeching, honest, or searching eyes look straight 
into the heart, and the heart would not be good 
for much if it did not grow warmer under their 
scrutiny. Generally all except the least useful 
and adaptable of such men find ways of earning 
much of that which is needed to keep them 
decently clad and safely fed during their years 
of study; but it is anxious work starting them 
on self-support, and helping them to drive 
away homesickness. 

There is a feeling of gritting sand and the 
lack of oil in the wheel when purse-proud, over- 
dressed, loud-voiced, tired-eyed youths drift to 
me in their attempts to escape parts of their 



162 AT THE NORTE OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

college duties. They have come from shoddy- 
homes to mix shoddy with the honest stuff of 
Harvard life. It would be better for them, for 
us, and for all their associates, if they never set 
foot on scholastic ground. Still they serve as 
a foil to the noble-hearted men of wealth who 
are the glory of a college, — men who are strong 
in their willingness to aid others, pure in heart, 
active in body, loyal to the ideals of the Uni- 
versity. 

One reason that the wheel of duty turns hard 
is to be found in the multitude of human atoms 
pressing against it. The present system of col- 
lege government was well adapted for the man- 
agement of five or six hundred men, for it is an 
easy task for an officer of keen sympathies and 
a good memory to carry even more than six 
hundred men in his mind, and to know their 
faces, names, and general record. Now that 
the six hundred have become two thousand, and 
the same system is applied, each officer being 
expected to know something of every student, 
the memory gives way, interest weakens, and 
discipline through acquaintance becomes im- 
possible. Here and there individual students 
stand out conspicuously and become well-known 
figures in the crowd; but it is more likely to be 
through their success in football than in their 
studies. The man who attains "Grade A" in all 



MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 163 

his studies may be dull-eyed and dingy ; but the 
half-back on the university eleven cannot fail to 
have in him some of the qualities of the hero. 

On the football field of a Saturday afternoon 
I am less likely to let my thoughts wander away 
to Chocorua than when at my desk. Something 
akin to the wild north wind seems surging down 
old Jarvis when the crimson rush-line guards 
its bunch of ball-carriers as they fly round the 
left end, blocking, interfering, sweeping down 
opposing arms, hurling themselves against 
crouching tacklers, and finally falling across 
the line for the triumphant touchdown. That 
Chocorua north wind is as irresistible in its 
way, when in October it hurls itself from the 
mountains and lashes the lake till foam flies in 
white masses over the crests of the breaking 
waves. Such winds often arise suddenly, and 
in a moment change the placid water, full of 
its reflections of gay forest and lofty peak, into 
a turbulent mass of waves. I well remember a 
soft, hazy morning when we rowed a heavy flat- 
bottomed boat to the northern end of the lake, 
returning about noon. When in the middle of 
the pond, the wind caught us, and, turning the 
boat sideways, drove it towards a shallow cove 
lined with boulders. Every wave dashed spray 
and water over the gunwales, and the most vig- 
orous rowing availed nothing against the furi- 



164 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

ous wind. It was not until I could jump over- 
board in the shoal water and push the boat 
before me out of the wind that I really regained 
the mastery of it. 

About the middle of October a vast regiment 
of birds passes over the Bearcamp valley. On 
the 13th of October, 1889, I counted and recog- 
nized 488 birds. Of these, 173 were crows, 
flying from the northeast towards the southwest 
in two great flocks. They passed far above the 
forests, many of them being much above the 
tops of the highest mountains. On the same 
day I counted 143 juncos, which were peppered 
all over fields, roads, small thickets, pasture 
bushes, and woods of small height. Wherever 
we strolled the little cowled heads turned to 
watch us, or the white V-shaped tail-feathers 
flashed as the juncos flew from us. The white- 
throated sparrows were almost always with them, 
coming, I doubt not, from the same breeding- 
grounds, and bent upon reaching the same 
winter-quarters, or havens even farther south 
than those which juncos like. Now and then a 
white-crowned sparrow is to be seen among 
flocks of this kind. Those who watch for them 
are apt to see many white-throats, which they 
try to persuade themselves are the rarer species, 
but when the eye at last rests upon a white- 
crown there is no doubting his identity. 



MY HEART 'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 165 

The golden -crested kinglets were present in 
great numbers on the same 13th of October, 
1889, and as they passed through the evergreens 
they accomplished a marvelous amount of effec- 
tive house-cleaning. With them or near them 
chickadees, red nuthatches, white nuthatches, 
and brown creepers took part in the keen in- 
spection of the trees, and woe came to the in- 
sect which fell under their eyes. 

Among the other birds which I recorded that 
day were robins, a hermit thrush, bluebirds, 
yellow-rumped warblers, solitary vireos, a flock 
of thirty -five goldfinches, a good many sparrows 
of various kinds, blue jays, one or two kinds of 
woodpeckers, several hawks, and a flock of black 
ducks. They formed the rear guard of the 
grand army, and as the leaves rustled down over 
them it was easy to imagine snowflakes gather- 
ing in the northern clouds and waiting for a 
summons to begin their soft descent upon the 
abandoned earth. 

Bird voices sometimes mingle with the hum 
and roar of my duty -wheel. Opposite my office 
window are two tall pine-trees, almost the only 
evergreens in the college yard. These trees 
swarm with the alien sparrows, whose clamor at 
times is almost deafening. Better three months 
of utter silence than such bird music as this. 
Each year, as autumn deepens into winter, I 



ICG AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

watch the immigrant sparrow to see whether he 
is not learning that migration southward in the 
season of snow is wise and comfortable. He 
does wander somewhat, already, when food fails, 
and it will not be strange if, as years pass, he 
should acquire by sympathetic vibration some- 
thing of the swing of the migratory pendulum. 

When I walk slowly home from my office 
past Christ Church and the silent field of 
quaintly lettered stones, past the old elm within 
whose shade Washington took command of the 
Colonial army, and past Cotton Mather's gold 
chanticleer holding high his ancient head against 
the rosy afterglow, I seem to see beyond all 
these things the crouching lion of Chocorua. 
Waking or dreaming, the outline of that peak is 
always stamped upon my northern horizon, and 
the north is the point to which my face turns as 
surely as does the needle, whenever my face, 
like the needle, is left to settle its direction in 
accordance with its controlling affinities. In 
these October days the picture of Chocorua 
which haunts me is not a summer picture. Far 
from it. In it the leaves are falling, drifting 
down like snow, birds are silent, nervous, al- 
ways on the alert for danger ; new ledges show 
upon the mountain-sides, new vistas have opened 
through the forests, and spots which, when be- 
hind their August leaf mantles seemed dark and 



MY HEART'S JN THE HIGHLANDS. 167 

secret, are now as open as the day. The brooks 
are more noisy, and easily seen, the grouse fly 
afar off; if one wishes a flower he must pluck 
the witch-hazel or let the bitter yarrow or the 
last clusters of goldenrod and asters satisfy him. 
Nature seems preoccupied and inclined to tell 
the visitor to see what he wants, and to take 
what he can find, but to let her alone. 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 

Friday, October 21, was observed by Har- 
vard University as a holiday, — Columbus, while 
hunting for something else, having on that day, 
four hundred years ago, rediscovered America 
for the Europeans. On the same day, four 
hundred years ago, the Americans discovered 
Columbus, a weary and worn mariner, nearing 
the shore in a small and feebly-rigged ship. At 
that time America was much more of a boon to 
the explorer than he seemed likely to be to the 
continent. 

I left Cambridge about the time the sun 
reached it, and gained the valley of the Bear- 
camp at 1 p. m. There are some days in the 
year which seem to have happened upon the 
wrong calendar day. They are too cold or too 
warm to keep company with the days which go 
before and after. This was not one of them. 
It was a model late October day, with clear air, 
a rushing wind, dark blue-gray clouds moving 
fast across a pale blue sky, leaves flying before 
the wind, and with ruffled water full of cold 
fights, though in spots increasing in its reflec- 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 169 

tions the blue of the sky. Marvelous colors 
were spread upon the face of the meadows, and 
crept up the sides of the hills. The world was 
in gay attire, gayer even than the towns this 
day decked out in honor of the Genoese. 

Gazing out of the train window, I have seen 
the Sandwich range from afar over the melting 
greens of spring, the rich verdure of siunmer, 
and the cold, still snow of winter. To-day I 
saw it framed in russet and carmine, — the col- 
ors of the oak-clad hills of Wakefield. The 
peak of Chocorua was capped by a dark slate- 
colored cloud from which rain seemed to be fall- 
ing. Behind or above the other mountains of 
the range the same threatening vapors hung. 
As the train sped onward, past Ossipee Lake, 
over the Bearcamp, and up to the West Ossipee 
station, the clouds rolled away and a flood of 
clear sunlight poured its revealing rays into the 
hidden colors of the distant forests. From cold, 
dark masses in which black rocks were no darker 
than gloomy groves, the mountains' sides sud- 
denly became aglow with warm tones. The 
far-reaching view suggested a painter's palette, 
upon which he had been daubing his colors from 
the tubes. Here he laid on a mass of dark 
green, there crimson, and next to it pale yellow. 
Then buff and orange, scarlet and blood - red 
pleased him, and he rubbed them upon spare 



170 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

areas. Cobalt and ultramarine added here and 
there, with now and then a dash of silvery white 
or a broad band of burnt sienna, served to make 
the scarlets more intense and the yellows more 

asrsressive. 

ITT f\ • 

Driving in an open wagon from West Ossipee 
to the Chocorua House, I found a heavy over- 
coat, warm gloves, and a fur robe essential to 
comfort, especially on coming from the steam- 
heated cars into the racing northwest wind. As 
we sped through groves and across meadows, 
my eyes devoured the wonderful coloring of all 
that had once been green. I could see nothing 
else, think of nothing else. The contrast to 
our summer coloring could not have been much 
sharper if I had been transported to the san- 
guinary groves and pastures of the red planet 
Mars. Even the birds which rose from the 
roadside and whirled away before the wind 
seemed less interesting, so absorbing were the 
marvels of coloring in foliage from ancient oak 
to tender grasses. A flock of birds seemed to 
dance through the sunlight across the road, yet 
when I looked after them they were only beech 
leaves hurried along by the wind. A cloud 
of leaves, picked up by an eddy of the air and 
tossed high above the trees, suddenly became 
bluebirds and sparrows speeding away from 
the wagon across the pasture. Crows, few in 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 171 

number, and unusually wary, were not so easily 
mistaken for leaves, nor were the robins, which 
occasionally rose in flocks from the grass and 
sought the branches of leafless maples or butter- 
nuts. 

After a hasty dinner I left the hotel and 
crossed field and copse to the outlet of the Cho- 
corua lakes. The third lake, with its deep, 
dark water and its grove of lofty white pines 
shutting it in from distant views, is one of the 
most daintily lovely nooks in this region of 
beauty and grandeur. Crows love the dark 
pines, wild ducks float in their shadows, and 
many a mink has been trapped at the end of 
the dam. I found no life stirring in woods or 
water, so stepping cautiously along the moul- 
dering logs of the dam, I gained the farther 
shore and crossed a broad, rock-strewn pasture, 
once covered by a growth of lofty pines. I 
know not how many years ago they fell or were 
felled, but this I do know, that scores of pitch- 
soaked knots are hidden in their ruins and 
among the ferns and bushes which have sprung 
from the decaying stumps. Many is the winter 
evening in town that I have sat by the fireside 
and gazed into the red flame of the blazing 
"light-wood" gathered in happy October days 
from this old pasture. As the pitch grew hot 
and burst through the dry wood, whining and 



172 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

whistling, blowing out long jets of white smoke 
and slender tongues of flame, its voice and 
warmth have carried me back in spirit to the 
brown beds of fern, the busy chipmunks under 
the old oak in the wall, or to the mayflowers 
gathered in spring from the edges of the linger- 
ing snow-banks. I passed a ledge of rocks on 
which I had seen a woodchuck sunning himself 
last August, and I recalled how he had squeezed 
himself into a little cave in the ledge only to 
find me peering in after him, and quite able to 
reach him with a stick. His method of escape 
from me was characteristic. Grunting and 
snarling, he spent half his time in threatening 
to come out and attack me, and the other half 
in undermining himself and poking the earth 
with his nose into the hole through which I 
was looking. In five minutes he had completely 
covered the opening and sunk his plump body 
out of reach of my probe. Later in the season 
I had a young woodchuck which had been partly 
tamed escape from captivity by gnawing his 
way through a thick pine board. The same 
individual repeatedly climbed up six feet from 
the floor on the coarse wire netting which formed 
the front of his cage, so that in future I shall 
not think it strange if I see a woodchuck climb 
a tree. His eccentricity also carried him to 
the point of devouring nearly a third of the 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 173 

carcass of a freshly -killed red squirrel, although 
an abundance of clover and young vegetables 
were close at hand ready for his dinner. 

My walk took me up the western side of the 
lake to my own land and cottage. Robins rose 
from the ground in small flocks, a few tree 
sparrows and j uncos flew from a plowed field 
by the wall, and two crows were feeding on 
swampy ground by a brook. It was to them 
that the land really belonged, not to me, — a 
waif from the city. So a flock of white-throats 
thought, as I disturbed them feeding upon the 
chaff at the back door of my barn. They flew 
into a bush on which a few dry leaves swung. 
While still watching them, as I supposed, I dis- 
covered that they had vanished, the wagging 
leaves alone remaining. In the orchard a few 
red apples hung, and gleamed like polished 
stones. One which grew upon a wild tree in 
the edge of the wood swung near the ground, 
and sharp little teeth had bitten out pieces from 
its side. Some of the fruit which lay upon the 
ground had been gnawed away until its seeds 
could be reached. Man eats the pulp and 
throws away the seeds, the mice and squirrels 
waste the pericarp solely to gain the seeds. 
Perhaps in this case man would have thrown 
away both apple and seeds had he tasted the 
bitter, wild fruit. 



174 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

The lake was lower by a foot than I had ever 
before seen it in the autumn. In August it had 
washed the bushes on its dikes; now a yard or 
more of sand tempted a stroller to follow its fair 
rim past wood and meadow. Along my shore 
of the lake the natural dike is in places fully 
seven feet high. It has been made during the 
centuries by the "thrust" of the ice which re- 
sults from the expansion of the ice-field by day 
following its contraction by night. On a sandy 
shore the expanding ice pushes up a little ridge 
of silt, and works it higher and higher as the ice 
mass rises during the winter. If the edge of 
the ice meets an obstacle, it is apt to break at a 
foot or more from the shore, and the pieces, still 
carrying their load of gravel, are shoved up the 
bank to its top, until, as years roll by, the dike 
is made too high to receive further additions. 

The lake in summer is certain to be stirring 
with life. Insects upon and over the water, 
fish, frogs, birds, muskrats, and often large 
animals are in sight and moving both by day 
and by night. Now, as the waning sun grew 
pale behind the birches, no living creature 
moved. The yellow leaves drifted out upon the 
breeze, and kept on drifting across the ruffied 
water. Nothing cared where they drifted. 
They were dead, and just then all the world 
seemed full of falling, drifting leaves, with no 




TWTEKJHT ON THE LAKE 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 175 

one to notice them or care for them. Were 
they to blame for the feeling of sadness which 
crept over me as the sun went down and the 
first chill of night came into the air? Or was 
it the absence of those who might, had they 
been by the lake, have enjoyed the placid twi- 
light with me? No lights gleamed behind the 
closed blinds of my home, no fire crackled upon 
the hearth. Those whom I loved were far away 
in the city. Leaves were falling in the city, 
birds had fled from it as well as from the moun- 
tains. Chilly night had fallen there too, and 
with it came, not the sweetness of clear streams 
and pine groves, but the foul breath of the 
Charles and of Alewife Brook, open sewers of 
filthy towns. No, it was not the sadness of the 
season or the influence of drifting leaves which 
cast a little shadow over my enjoyment of the 
exquisite scene before me. It was regret at 
being alone in its presence and of having to 
leave it so soon in .favor of desk and drudgery. 
At ten minutes past five, planets sparkled in 
the silvery sky, yet a mile away the colors of 
oaks and poplars still burned their way to me 
through the clear air. As I walked back to the 
hotel, I noticed more clearly the number of 
trees which had lost their leaves. By daylight 
they were inconspicuous, flanked and backed as 
they had been by evergreens and trees full of 



176 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

showy color. Now they reared their skeleton 
arms against the sky, making some parts of the 
way seem as desolate as in winter. Many of 
the goldenrods, asters, and immortelles contri- 
buted to the wintriness of the scene, for only 
dry white phantoms of their once cheerful flow- 
ers remained upon their stalks. The soft air 
with only a trace of cold in it belied these signs 
of winter, and so did the occasional note of a lo- 
cust. From the little rustic bridge between the 
large and second lakes, the evening view of the 
mountains was bewitching. If a hermit thrush 
could have sung even one phrase of his holy 
music, I might have felt satisfied; but no bird 
was there to sing, and only the waves lapping 
upon the pebbles and the breeze sighing in the 
pines broke the silence of the starlit night. A 
leaf came sailing down the lake and passed un- 
der the bridge. Its little life as a green leaf 
was over. It had served the tree which bore 
it, and now its parched body was given to the 
stream to be borne away wherever wind and cur- 
rent decided. Was it, then, dead for all time? 
Ask this of the coal which glows in the grate, 
the oil which burns in the lamp, or the may- 
flower whose roots spread through the leaf mould 
in the forest. Where was this leaf a year ago, 
or a century ago? As certainly as the parts of 
this leaf have endured thus far, so certainly will 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 177 

they continue to endure in ages to come. It 
seems equally sure that if there is a something 
in me which will not and cannot in time be 
made into leaves to wither and go down-stream 
with the wind, then that something will neces- 
sarily have as good a chance as the leaf to go 
down a stream of its own and bring up safely 
where it can be used again in endless cycles. 

The voices of young chickens awoke me next 
morning, and mingling with their melancholy 
peeping came the wailing of a northeast wind as 
it struggled through a window crack. Bed was 
warm and my watch said it was only six o'clock. 
I peeped through my blinds and saw that the 
piazza roof seemed to be shining with rain. 
Nothing but the momentum of a previous de- 
termination to open my shutters led my finger 
to press the snap and let the wind swing the 
blind from me : for by the dismal shining of the 
rain my mind had been completely robbed of 
any wish to see the sky. The blind slammed 
against the clapboards and a bewildering sea of 
color surged across my vision. Instead of a 
waste of gray mist and dull wet field, I saw six 
mountains set against a silver sky ; and rolling 
from them towards me, line after line of wave- 
like wooded ridges and pasture slopes, each 
more brilliant in coloring than the last. The 
sunlight was just touching a solitary cloud 



178 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

which floated feather-like above Paugus, and a 
delicate sea-shell pink suffused it. Some of 
the same radiance fell upon the granite peak of 
Chocorua, floated over the highest ridges of 
spruce-hung Paugus and Passaconaway, warmed 
the naked shoulder of Whiteface, and touched 
even the dark head of the Sandwich Dome 
risino- from the Pemigewasset forests. The 
flanks of these mountains and the whole of 
Mount Whittier, which rose in the southwest, 
were violet. A moment before they might have 
been dark purple, but now the rosy rays of 
dawn were stealing down them swiftly. I had 
scarcely time to note the wealth of suppressed 
color which lay upon the wave-like hills between 
me and the mountains, or to spring to my north 
window, fling its blinds wide open, and see the 
lake so ruffled by the wind and so hidden from 
the coming dawn as to be only the quicksilver 
side of the mirror, before the sunlight began 
creeping down the mountain-sides. 

It is a pretty sight in the twilight or dark- 
ness to see a rosy edge of flame play along the 
margin of a sheet of burning paper, slowly de- 
vouring it. Some parts of the paper burn more 
brightly than others, but the whole line of ad- 
vancing fire is beautiful and animating. So it 
was with the line of sunlight slowly passing 
from the rosy crests of the high mountains, 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 179 

downward, with even march across their flanks, 
their projecting spurs, then the nearer hills, 
the lake, and river hollow, and finally over the 
great reach of woods and field nearest to me. 
In summer nearly the whole of this wide land- 
scape is green or grayish green. In winter it 
is white, grayish brown, and dark green. Early 
autumn dots the woods with vivid points of 
scarlet and gold which stand out sharply from 
the mass of green; but as the sunlight crept 
downward over this late October foliage the 
prevailing color, which glowed forth full of 
strength, warmth, and meaning, was red, — the 
red of dregs of wine, of iron rust, of sleek 
kine, of blood. Intermingled with it were bits 
of golden or of sulphur yellow, marking birches 
and poplars, and in the pastures a few maples 
late in turning blazed with fiery scarlet as 
their fellows had weeks earlier. 

The warmest of the color came from the 
oaks, but the beeches supported them with 
generous pigments, and so did the masses of 
blackberry vines, choke-cherry and huckleberry 
bushes, and other small shrubs which had 
turned crimson, red, or madder-brown under 
the October sun. Sweet-fern bushes, brakes, 
ferns, pine needles, many of the grasses, and 
most of the fallen leaves constituting the greater 
part of the earth's carpet, answered the sun's 



180 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

greeting by showing broad expanses of brown, 
ranging from burnt umber to dark straw color. 
Near the lake were many pines, and as the 
light reached them they seemed to grow higher, 
broader, nearer, and to shed into the surround- 
ing air something of their steadfastness and 
strength. They change not, falter not, fail 
not, come what may to their deciduous neigh- 
bors. In this northern land they are a symbol 
of constancy and faith. No one can look at a 
pine-tree in winter without knowing that spring 
will come again in due time. The lake itself 
soon shared in the flood of color brought out by 
the sun. Most of its surface was ruffled by 
the breeze, but at points where the high pines 
sheltered the water and left it rippleless, the 
mountain-sides mirrored themselves, and the 
reflection was red like wine. 

As the sun rose higher above the hill behind 
me, and cast its rays against the west, more 
and more from above, and less from a level, 
the colors in the landscape became less vivid, 
and leafless trees, birch trunks, and softer tints 
in general, blended with the maroons and 
browns, toning them down and flattening them, 
until the prevailing coloring on the mountain 
slopes became like the bloom on the cheek of a 
plum ; and even the brighter, stronger tints in 
the nearer view grew softer and dimmer. 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 181 

After breakfast I climbed the ridge behind 
the Chocorua House and sought a small beech 
grove on its crest. In the pasture one of the 
hawkweeds, two goldenrods, autumn butter- 
cups, yarrow, the red and the white clover 
were still in bloom, sparingly, of course, and 
only in warm corners, but still clinging bravely 
to sunlight and life. Crickets and small green 
locusts were active and noisy. They frequented 
hollows in the pasture surface, where beech 
leaves had blown and lodged among the dry and 
matted fern fronds. Lying in one of these 
hollows, which made a warm dry cradle, I 
watched the locusts hopping from leaf to leaf, 
crawling along the warm faces of lichen-crusted 
boulders, and now and then working their 
bent legs up and down, while their fine, stri- 
dent music fretted upon my ear. Some were 
green, some brown, both large and small, some 
almost buff, tiny, and very agile. They were 
not the only insects enjoying the sunlight, for 
spiders, house-flies, now and then a bee, small, 
gauzy-winged flies, and many a queer and, to 
me, nameless thing, with nervous antennae, 
passed that way by wing or foot. At a spring 
in the woods where I drank of icy water, count- 
less hosts of springtails or bristletails skipped, 
in sprightly humor, over the leaves and the 
surface of the pool. About noon I saw a 



182 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

dragonfly dart past, and later a solitary ant 
crawl slowly across a patch of sand. No but- 
terflies came to me, yet they were still abundant 
in Cambridge. 

There was no chill in the air which surged 
over the hilltop. It was soft and caressing, 
yet so cool that thick clothing or constant exer- 
cise was needed to keep warm. Its perfect 
dryness made it seem less cool than it really 
was. The sky was wonderfully blue, and it lent 
its marvelous color to the lake. I have a friend 
who says that March water is bluer than any 
other. It certainly carries its blueness 
straighter into the heart than any other, but as 
I looked at Chocorua Lake from the hilltop it 
seemed to me that it could not be any bluer 
than it was, framed in glossy pines on the one 
hand, and in golden brown and wine color on 
the other. The wind was rough with the lake 
this morning. Striking it suddenly at the far 
north end, near where my well -loved home stands 
silent and deserted in the old orchard, it dark- 
ened the clear blue into angry flaw-lines and 
hurried them down the long mile towards the 
bridge, against which it hurled them in white- 
capped waves. I laughed as I watched one of 
the white-edged squalls pass down the length of 
the lake, for it reminded me of a day in mid- 
winter when I attempted to cross the lake near 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES, 183 

its middle, carrying my pet owl "Puffy " perched 
upon my gun-barrel. A squall came over the 
white ice, bearing stinging snow-dust in its van ; 
it caught Puffy from his perch and set him down 
upon the ice with feet helplessly spread, and 
then as he opened his wings and tail and strug- 
gled in the breeze, it spun him southward, slid- 
ing and rolling, poor wisp of feathers that he 
was, until he was landed, more dead than alive, 
in the woods on the southern shore. 

The pines below my breezy hilltop tempted 
me by their music into their aisles. Under 
them was spread the new carpet of their needles, 
dry, warm, and tempting as a couch of eider- 
down. The wind sang in their tops, oh so 
sweetly, and it took me back to the moment in 
my earliest childhood when I was first conscious 
of that soft, soothing music. I do not know 
when it was, nor where it was, nor how young 
I may have been, but I can recall as from an 
almost infinite distance the memory of a sudden 
feeling of happiness at hearing the voice of the 
pines, and knowing that it was something kind 
and soothing. If we are in tune with Nature, 
all her music can find a way into the heart and 
satisfy something there which yearns for it, and 
never can be wholly happy without it. The 
man who trembles at thunder is more to be 
pitied than the poor Esquimau who was fright- 



184 AT TEE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

ened the other day by the crash of orchestral 
music at a Boston theatre. 

While I listened to the pines a chickadee sang 
his phoebe-note. It was but once, but it told 
of his happiness as he bustled about in the dark 
pine wood from which warbler and vireo had 
departed, and upon which before many days the 
first snows of winter are to fall. Brave little 
titmice! they are among the sturdiest of New 
England's sons. 

In the heart of the pines stands a house. I 
well remember the gray autumn morning when 
three of us, on a Thanksgiving holiday, staked 
out its foundation lines in the thin snow and 
drifted leaves. We tramped back and forth 
among the trees, now higher, now lower, then a 
little to the left, then more to the right. The 
peak of Chocorua must clear those monster 
pines ; that bunch of low pines must be left low 
enough to give a free view of the large lake, and 
finally the young trees rising on the left must 
not on any account cover the charming glimpse 
of the third lake with its grove. At last we 
settled the spot, and drove our first stakes, fin- 
gered the long brass tape and drove more stakes. 
Our hands, ears, and noses were cold, but it 
was rare sport settling just where that new home 
should be planted among the singing pines. 

To this house, deserted like my own sunny 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 185 

cottage, I took my way. Ascending its steps, I 
stood within its lofty, granite -walled piazza, as 
romantic a spot, with its three arched openings 
facing westward, as a screened loggia overlook- 
ing fair Maggiore's azure waves. High above 
and out of sight of the road, embowered in the 
forest, and with the very essence of the exquisite 
Chocorua landscape framed in its arches, this 
house might well attract me and draw me, even 
from the singing pines, to linger the rest of the 
forenoon above its terraces. Bees and locusts 
made music in the sunlight, flaming geraniums 
bloomed at the foot of the castle wall, the per- 
fume of sweet peas still in full flower hung 
lightly in the air, and upon one of the stone col- 
umns of the arches, morning-glories, unharmed 
by the several frosts which had wrought havoc 
with other tender plants, turned their filmy blos- 
soms towards the sun. Society with its present 
habits is to blame for the desertion of such a 
home as this on such a day as this, when Nature 
is at her loveliest. Why is it that all New 
England which has brains, money, or philan- 
thropy thinks the city the one proper sphere for 
life in all save a few weeks given grudgingly to 
rest? The cities are too large, too rich in hu- 
man forces. They are debasing our New Eng- 
land stock, draining away the best of our vital- 
ity in their too nervous life. If a third of their 



186 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

population could be sown into the fallow places 
in the hill country, their own competition would 
become a less fatal flame, and the country dis- 
tricts, instead of steadily degenerating in phys- 
ical, moral, and intellectual tone, would again 
become prolific in healthy men and women. 

So far as I know, the word "moor " is not ap- 
plied to any part of our New England scenery; 
yet there are dry, comparatively treeless uplands, 
wind-swept and dotted with bogs which closely 
resemble English moorland. I climbed to the 
level of one early in the afternoon and strolled 
along its rough surface. At the first bit of bog 
that I struck a wood-frog jumped across the 
path. He was listless, and made but short 
leaps. When I followed him he plunged be* 
neath a log which lay in the cold mud. Be- 
yond, on dry ground, a grouse rose noisily from 
low cover and flew far before going out of 
sight. As I crossed some stony ground a mouse 
ran from me and hid between two boulders. 
Blocking both entrances to his hiding-place 
with my feet, I tilted one rock away from the 
other. The mouse darted first towards one of 
my feet and then towards the other. He dared 
not cross either, for I kept them moving. So 
he remained trembling in the middle. He was 
ffesperomys, the deer mouse, big-eyed and 
white-footed. I left him unharmed. 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 18? 

Following the edge of my moor, I came to a 
little glen which cut deeply into its side. A 
few acres of bog fed a little brook that passed 
through the glen on its way to the river. The 
ravine was heavily wooded, mainly with tall and 
unusually slender beeches. Descending into 
this grove was like entering the halo which the 
sunlight of Paris, shining through golden-tinted 
glass, casts around the tomb of Napoleon in the 
chapel of the Hotel des Invalides. The rush- 
ing of the wind in the dry leaves filled the glen 
with sweet, soothing sounds ; the sun warmed it 
and suffused it with radiance; and a deep bed 
of beech leaves gathered in a hollow offered a 
couch too tempting to be passed by. Every 
sense was gratified in this abode of music and 
color, for a faint perfume came from the leaves, 
telling of ripening and the fulfillment of nature's 
purposes. At ease in the drifted leaves, I 
watched the tree-tops bending before the gusts. 
One moment the golden roof of foliage con- 
cealed the sky; the next, as every lofty head 
inclined, wide areas of distant ether appeared, 
only to vanish again under the rhythmic move- 
ment of the trees. The gusts kept the air well 
filled with falling, fluttering fragments of the 
golden roof. Hundreds of leaves were often in 
the air at once, parting company from hundreds 
of thousands still upon the branohes, but going 



188 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

to join legions already on the ground, waiting 
there the soft tyranny of the snow. 

In the midst of the beeches stood a lofty 
hemlock. The owner of this wood had chosen 
it for his castle. About thirty feet from the 
ground at a point where several limbs diverged 
from the main trunk a nest was securely fixed. 
Perhaps an inexperienced eye would have taken 
it for a bird's nest. It may have been a bird's 
nest originally. Now the mass of dead beech 
leaves heaped upon it and woven into its fabric, 
making it a conspicuous object from every point 
of view, proclaimed it to be the home of a gray 
squirrel. Winds may blow, and rain, hail, and 
snow fall, but that nest will rest secure against 
the hemlock's trunk, under the thatched roof of 
hemlock branches. Early in September I found 
a new nest of this kind in a large beech-tree, 
and upon opening it made a discovery. The 
compressed green beech leaves gave out a strong, 
aromatic odor which I at once recognized as 
one of which I had often obtained whiffs in 
walking through the beech woods, but which I 
never had been able to assign to any flower or 
shrub. 

In the lulls between the wind's gusts I could 
hear the tinkling of a brook at the bottom of 
the glen. Peering into the gloom below, where 
hemlock bushes overshadowed the stream's bed, 



TEE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 189 

I sought for a gleam of water. Not a drop was 
to be seen. I descended, following the sound 
of the falling drops, and came to a perpendicular 
ledge at the upper end of the ravine. There 
was no mistaking the direction of the music; it 
came from the face of the rocks and the pile of 
debris at its bottom. Still not a drop of water 
could be seen. The falling beech leaves had 
completely covered brook and fall, pool and 
rock, but behind their veil the water went on 
with its singing. It will do the same, brave 
little rill! when snow covers the leaves and ice 
forms above and below the snow. The sweet 
jingling notes will be muffled, but they will be 
sung all the same. 

Of course I drank from the brook, sweeping 
away the encumbering leaves from the top of 
the fall to get the water just where it rushed 
most swiftly. Not to drink from a New Hamp- 
shire brook is almost as much of a slight as not 
to bow to a friend, or not to kiss a little child 
when she lifts her face for the good-night caress 
which she thinks all the world is ready and 
worthy to give to little children. Refreshed, I 
clambered up the other side of the glen and 
regained the open moorland, and the glorious, 
rushing wind. Across the valley the old river 
terraces stood out as sharply as steps cut in the 
face of the hill. To have cut those fair out- 



190 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

lines there must have been more water flowing 
out of Chocorua lakes in the olden time than 
flows from them now. Perhaps in those days 
Ossipee Lake washed these very terraces. 

Coming to another deep cleft in the side of 
the moor, I hesitated whether to run down one 
grassy slope, a hundred feet and more, and then 
up the other slope, or to go round. Precedent 
decided me to go round. About six feet below 
the edge of the bank a narrow well-trodden path 
skirted the ravine, going to its head, crossing 
at the same level and following along just below 
the edge of the opposite bank. Sometimes a 
well-turfed bank in a pasture where food is not 
abundant will be scored by many paths of this 
kind, one below another. They are made by 
the cattle, for a cow never will go down a steep 
incline if, without too great exertion, she can 
keep her four feet approximately on a level. 

When I gained the southern end of the 
moor-like ridge, two villages lay before me, one 
on the left, the other on the right. One was 
the home of the dead, the other the toiling- 
ground of the living. They can see each other, 
and year by year the village on the hill grows 
larger, and that in the valley grows smaller. 
When the venerable village postmaster was 
suddenly turned out of office a few years ago 
against the public wishes, but in obedience to 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 191 

the infamous "spoils " policy, he was commiser- 
ated with for his hard fortune. "Yes," he said, 
"it is hard, but I knew it was coming, and 
bless your soul, the time is near when I shall 
be turned out of this house too, and told to let 
some other fellow rotate in and get warm. But, 
my friend, there is a house of mine up yonder 
on the hill where politics and money don't 
count, and when this world seems unkind I 
look up there and say to myself, 'Pretty soon, 
pretty soon.' " 

While waiting for the mail wagon to come 
down the Ossipee road, over the red bridge and 
up the hill to the store, I plucked individual 
leaves from trees and bushes, and marveled over 
their many ways of changing from pliant green 
to crackling brown. One of the most brilliant 
shrubs near the road was a blueberry. Its 
leaves were crimson, tending towards scarlet, 
and their surface was as brilliant as satin. The 
blackberry, which in some lights seemed as 
bright as the blueberry, was more of a wine 
color, and it had a duller surface. Some of 
the viburnum leaves were rich red on their up- 
per faces, but pale below, their mid -vein being 
pink, and a greenish tone pervading their under 
surface. Others, shaped like maple leaves, 
were of a singular color, — a kind of pinkish 
purple. An oak leaf, plucked from a young 



192 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

bush not many years out of the acorn, was the 
color of newly-shed blood in its centre, but 
many small detached areas upon it remained 
green. From a sucker shoot of a poplar I gath- 
ered several strangely effective leaves. One 
was of sulphur yellow coarsely spotted with 
black dots; another was blackish brown with 
crimson veinings above, and clear yellowish 
white veinings below, — a most unique combi- 
nation. From an adjoining poplar I picked one 
uniformly black over three quarters of its area, 
but blotched with vivid green near its apex. 
Its veins were yellowish white both above and 
below. The clusters of lambkill leaves were 
very pretty. While the upper surfaces of the 
leaves were faded vermilion or pinkish salmon 
color, the under sides were buff, or very pale 
sage green. The willow leaves were queer, 
damaged looking things, a good deal nibbled by 
insects and much splashed with dark brown 
upon a yellowish olive groundwork. A bunch 
of violet leaves were clear golden yellow, while 
some of the more delicate ferns were nearly 
white. Truly the botanists have many pleasant 
problems before them if they are ever to ascer- 
tain why some green leaves turn black, and 
others brown, orange, yellow, red, purple, or 
white. 

An inspection of the mail led me to walk 



THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 193 

rapidly back to the Chocorua House and pack 
my bag for a return journey to the city. As I 
drove southward the mountains, seen across the 
pine barrens, were veiled in haze. The wind 
seemed chiding me for going away so abruptly 
from this paradise of color. Again and again I 
looked back at my favorite peaks and forests, 
printing more and more deeply in my mind the 
recollection of their noble outlines and remark- 
able coloring. Finally from the platform of 
the rear car I saw them over the Bearcamp 
meadows, and above and beyond them, with its 
cloud-cap just drifting away to the eastward, 
Mount Washington, benignantly presiding over 
the northern sky. Then the train rumbled 
across the Bearcamp trestle and the shadow of 
the Ossipee hills fell upon us and deepened into 
nigrht. 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 

In Cambridge, Saturday, the 5th of Novem- 
ber, began its daylight in a driving snowstorm. 
The long, dry, sunny month of October was, as 
the farmers had prophesied, to be followed by 
a real old-fashioned, early and hard New Eng- 
land winter. By ten o'clock the warm sun and 
brisk northwest wind had dissipated the snow, 
and bad-weather prophets were silent. Not for 
long, however, for at noon the ground was again 
white, and as I crossed West Boston Bridge on 
my way to the train, the Back Bay was swept 
by a fierce wind which carried the spray from 
its gray-green waves half over the bridge piers, 
and into the level gravel walks on Charlesbank. 
My friends looked at me pityingly when I said 
that I was bound for the White Mountains, and 
asked whether I was not going to take my snow- 
shoes. 

Oddly enough, on reaching Portsmouth, hav- 
ing traveled to that point through dizzy myriads 
of flakes of the stickiest kind of snow, I found 
'ie sun brightly shining, and no snow visible on 
Jie Kittery pastures. Not until we were within 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 195 

sight of the hills which bound the Bearcamp 
valley on the south did snow again greet my 
eyes, and then it was confined to the highlands. 
My last trip had been such a revel in color 
that I found myself noticing tints more than 
other beauties in the ever-varying landscape 
through which the train flew shuttle-wise. A 
great change had come over the face of nature 
in the fortnight which had fled since my last 
visit. November was written in subdued tones 
where October had burned before. The birch 
groves were no longer filled with pale lambent 
flames. Their yellow leaves had all fallen, and 
their massed twigs needed the full power of the 
sun to show that behind their dull gray shading 
lurked the subdued color of the plum. Even 
darker, and without warm undertones, were 
the alder thickets, more black than gray. The 
larches were still pure gold, wonderful in their 
happy contrast to the pines and spruces. The 
apple-trees retained their full suit of leaves, 
sometimes touched with a golden light, often 
perfectly green. Under them the grass was 
generally as verdant as in spring. Barberries 
hung in dense masses in their bushes; the 
American holly berries blazed with scarlet, and 
here and there in the dull forest a gleam of 
crimson told of a blueberry or amelanchier bush. 
As the train whirled across wood-paths, they 



196 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

showed as yellowish stripes in the forest. The 
drifted beech leaves gave them tone. In the 
gloom of the matted alders, fuzzy balls of soiled 
wool seemed to have lodged. They were the 
flowers of the white clematis, gone to seed. 
Somewhat similar but thinner masses clung to 
the stalks of the fireweed. 

As the wind swept across a cornfield from 
which all but the stalks with one or two flaxen 
leaves had been stripped, the long leaves 
streamed and flapped before the breeze like 
yacht pennants. In the orchards piles of red 
and of yellow apples shone in the sunlight, and 
when one still depended from the tree it was as 
bright as a gilt ball on a Christmas-tree. 

The oaks still held their leaves stubbornly, 
but the blood had gone from them and their 
color was of tanned leather, deepening in places 
to a dull maroon. The dry stubble fields, 
closely cropped mowings, and rank meadows 
were all aglow with evenly spread color. The 
stubble fields were purplish, the fields pale 
yellow, and the meadows deep straw color. 
Masses of goldenrod stalks were well named, 
for they were golden brown. Their leaves were 
dull brown. If as the train dashed between 
gravel banks I caught a flash of crimson on the 
sand, I knew that blueberry bushes had caught 
root there. 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 197 

The daylight faded early, but as the sun sank 
it poured more and more color into the hills. 
Reflected rays danced from the window-panes 
of farmhouses on the high slopes to the east of 
the track. Such glimpses of isolated buildings 
have a flavor of home and snugness which no 
city suggests. The absence of leaves and the 
presence of many shadows cast by the low No- 
vember sun revealed more clearly than usual 
the pleasing contours of glacial hills and their 
eroded sides. Most of the gravelly products of 
the glacier are graceful in outline, composed of 
easy curves or gentle undulations. Not only 
are the sky lines grateful to the eye, but those 
which curve forward and back along the line of 
vision have in them the element of beauty. 
The cutting of banks by streams leaves many 
a gentle terrace which advances, retreats, now 
makes a bold front, the next moment shrinks 
away in a bow-shaped bay. Ice and water seem 
to abhor straight lines, but to love rhythmic mo- 
tion. Upon a small glacial mound shaped like 
a beehive stood a single pine, brave-limbed and 
lichen-grown. I have noticed it for years, and 
something in its pose always suggests "The 
Monarch of the Glen," with head erect and 
every sense alert. It was much fuller of anima- 
tion than the flock of dingy sheep which at first 
sight I thought to be moss-covered boulders. - 



198 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

The sun set not long after four o'clock, and 
the sky borrowed from it fleeting rosy light. 
Then the yellow-white steam from the engine 
billowed past my window, and through it shone 
the blue-white snow, making the steam seem 
soiled. As I looked forward at fields which we 
were approaching, no snow was to be seen, yet 
as we passed them and I looked back upon the 
northern side of their inequalities they were 
wholly white. 

When the lamps were lighted in the car my 
eyes rested, fascinated, upon the gilded axe 
which always hangs above the car door. Sig- 
nificant emblem of our civilization, which cyni- 
cally takes unwarrantable risks with life, limb, 
and property, in order that man may increase 
his misery by perpetually hurrying ! 

The gleam of Six Mile Pond told me that the 
train was in Madison. A moment later I was 
standing in the crisp night air knocking for 
supper at the tavern door. 

When we say " It is two miles from Madison 
to Tamworth Iron Works," we do not tell the 
whole truth. It would be better to add, "over 
the top of Deer Hill." For years Madison has 
gone to Tamworth over Deer Hill, or else it 
has stayed at home and wished that Deer Hill 
was elsewhere. How long grim devotion to the 
one occupied farm on Deer Hill will force the 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 199 

inhabitants of two townships to ignore the fact 
that a level road could readily unite them re- 
mains to be seen. Deer Hill given back to 
Charles's Wain as the only team enduring 
enough to travel steadily over it would be Deer 
Hill justly dealt with at last. 

At seven o'clock I stood on the crest of this 
stumbling-block to progress and gazed at its 
view of sky and forest. The moon struggled 
with eastern cloud-banks. In the north, white 
clouds drifted over whiter mountain ridges. 
Once the peak of Chocorua peeped through its 
veil and caught upon its marble sides the radi- 
ance of the coy moon. After following the 
road to within a quarter of a mile of the 
Iron Works, I left it and struck northwestward 
across the moor towards the Chocorua House. 
Suddenly I saw an object upon the level stub- 
ble which suggested danger. For many years I 
have lived in dread of meeting and being pur- 
sued by a skunk at night. Had the moment ar- 
rived ? Edging away from the object, I watched 
it keenly. Did it move? No. Yes! It was 
turning its head towards me and lifting that 
dreaded tail straight above its back. Still at 
least fifteen feet from the beast, I kept steadily 
on my way in a semicircle round it. The skunk 
revolved, keeping his head towards me, and then 
I saw his tail snapped forward irritably. I had 



200 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

reached a stone wall, and, springing upon it, I 
hooted after the manner of owls, barked after 
the manner of dogs, and then fled after the 
manner of men. I neither saw nor smelt any- 
thing more of the skunk. 

My way took me into the golden beech wood 
on the border of the moor. The moon, now 
free from clouds, shed a soft, dim light into the 
grove. Scarcely a leaf clung to the trees, but 
upon the ground they were heaped up ankle 
deep. As there had been crackling ice in all 
the pools in the road, it was not wonderful that 
the waters of the leaf -hidden brook were very 

cold. 

An hour after leaving Madison I stood before 
an open birch-wood fire in Chocorua Cottage. 
Not only did its warmth appeal to my cheeks 
and fingers, but something in the whirl of its 
flames and the snap of its sparks made my heart 
beat more in tune with all the world. 

The next morning I awoke at six o'clock and 
at once opened my blinds and raised my shades 
so that I could see the mountains both to the 
north and to the west. Not a cloud or a sus- 
picion of haze marred the perfect blueness of the 
sky or the distinctness of the outlines of hills, 
trees, and boulders. The moon was still nearly 
three hours from her time of setting, and her 
light, almost as much as that of the unrisen sun, 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 201 

contributed to the serene glow which filled the 
sky and fell softly upon the sleeping earth. 

There is nothing in nature any whiter than 
snow, and as the peak and bare upper ledges of 
Chocorua were covered by an almost unbroken 
envelope of snow, no alpine horn ever gleamed 
with a fairer light than that which shone from 
Chocorua's summit. Paugus, Passaconaway, 
and Whiteface are usually dark by contrast to 
Chocorua, even in midwinter. To my surprise 
they were almost as white as the marble lion 
itself. Their spruces were coated with snow, 
which had frozen in masses to the needles, effec- 
tually covering the dark green by a gleaming 
surface of white. 

As the sun neared the horizon, a faint rosy 
glow came into the western sky. Then it 
touched the snowy peaks, leaving them pale 
salmon color. Finally it crept down the moun- 
tain slopes, changing the silvery gray of the 
leafless forest masses into ashes-of-rose color, 
delightful to the eye. 

It was a winter landscape, yet as the sun 
climbed higher into the cloudless sky, the soft 
still air was caressing in its warm touch upon 
the cheek. I looked curiously at the thermo- 
meter, not knowing whether it would say 25° 
or 60°. It stood at 30°, a temperature which, 
with a Boston east wind and a rainstorm, is 



202 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

quite capable of freezing the love of life out of 
one's vitals. Feeling as buoyant as a cork, 1 
dashed off after breakfast in search of something 
high to climb. An overcoat was unbearable, 
and my jersey was dispensed with by ten o'clock, 
leaving me comfortable in ordinary indoor cos- 
tume. The air seemed full of life-giving qual- 
ity, joy, health, hope. So thought the titmice, 
robins, tree sparrows, j uncos, and kinglets, all 
of which were noisy and full of motion. 

Speeding past the lakes, I stopped for a mo- 
ment in my own orchard to lament the death of 
an osprey which I found at the foot of an apple- 
tree, where some hunters had left him. It is 
fortunate that all animals have not man's pro- 
pensity for killing merely for the sake of killing. 
Here was a bird of beautiful plumage, wonder- 
ful powers of sight and flight, measuring only 
five inches less than six feet from wing tip to 
wing tip, practically harmless, and by no means 
common in these mountains, yet after being shot 
merely for love of murder, his body was left 
where it fell, to feed skunks and foxes. Small 
wonder that creation seems out of joint wherever 
man's influence extends. 

My next stopping-place was the lonely lake, 
now more lonely than ever, for not a bird flew 
among its trees, and not a fin stirred in its green 
waters. Upon its mossy bank, marvelous to 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 203 

relate, I found three fresh blossoms of the hous- 
tonia. Like the sweet peas at my cottage, the 
witch-hazel by the brook, and the tiny sprig of 
goldenrod picked in the pasture, these frail 
flowers had endured frosts by the dozen and a 
recent fall of snow which must have buried them 
several inches deep. Over them a red maple 
was doing its best to keep them company, for 
its crimson buds seemed as plump and full of 
color as they ought to be next March. A 
flower of another kind bloomed in profusion 
upon the sand close to the lake's rim. It was 
like frosted silver in sheen, and the sunbeams 
loved to play in its beautiful, petals. How it 
grows I know not, but it comes up from the 
sand in a single night, rank by rank and cluster 
by cluster, often lifting up great masses of sand 
upon its spearheads. This flower is the ice 
flower, whose wonderful armies of needle-like 
crystals sprout under the influence of the frost 
from every damp mass of sand or gravel, ready 
to be crunched under foot in the morning as 
horse and man pass over the uplifted roads. 

In the first brook which I passed beyond the 
pond I saw two small trout, the longer of the 
two being not over an inch and a half from 
snout to tail. They seemed to me to be a little 
sluggish, or rather a trifle less instantaneous 
than in warm months. Two or three green 



204 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

locusts were also evidently depressed by the cool 
weather, and they played their tunes rarely and 
without much spirit. Listening to them and 
to the sounds which the wind made in a bunch 
of dry brakes, I fancied that I saw in what 
quarter the first grasshopper took his music 
lessons. The rubbing together of the parts of 
the withered fronds produced sounds almost 
exactly like the locust's strident playing. 

Taking the Hammond path, I ascended the 
eastern spur of Chocorua. The side of the 
mountain was one vast bed of loosely scattered 
leaves. Next spring each leaf will be pressed 
so closely upon its neighbor that the veining of 
one will be imprinted upon the face of the other. 
Now they are still free to drift with wind ed- 
dies, and to rustle noisily around the feet of the 
passer-by. The smell of oak leaves, newly 
fallen, is very powerful, and, except as a re- 
minder of autumn walks, too much like ink to 
be pleasant. Among the fallen leaves the 
bright green of checkerberry, club mosses, and 
wintergreen showed now and then, while the 
dark liver-colored leaves of a goldenrod con- 
trasted with the brown of the beech leaves. 

I must have climbed fully eight hundred feet 
from the level of the pastures before snow be- 
gan to appear along the path, and it was not 
until the line of low spruces was gained that 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 205 

the snow was continuous or at all deep. No 
sooner had I struck the snow area than I besran 
to find evidence of the passing along and across 
the path of the creatures of the woods. In five 
or six places a fox had followed the path for 
several rods. Rabbits had crossed it over and 
over again, and mice even had recognized it as 
a thoroughfare and taken laborious journeys in 
its drifts. 

A few minutes past noon I reached the top 
of Ball Mountain, or, as it is generally called, 
Bald Mountain. Here the snow lay four to 
eight inches deep upon everything except the 
bare ledges, which were dry and warm. As I 
gained the crest, a hawk sailed over me and out 
into that sea of space above the valley. What 
joy it must be to fly, and especially to soar and 
float, in high ether, with scarce a muscle mov- 
ing! Suddenly a plaintive note fell upon my 
ear, and, turning, I saw a bird about the size 
of a robin flying northward. It soon vanished 
in the distance, I meanwhile striving to recall 
when, where, and from what bird I had heard 
that sad cry before. Hoping to see more birds, 
and seeking an uninterrupted view of the peak, 
I climbed to the top of the ledges intermediate 
between Bald Mountain and the foot of the 
peak, and there, upon a broad, dry face of 
granite, on the edge of the steep incline which 



206 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

reaches far down into the eastern hollow of 
Chocorua, I rested and drew strength from the 
perfect peace of my surroundings. 

The only sounds which I could hear, and 
they were only occasional, were produced by 
the fall of masses of snow from spruce limbs, 
and the sighing of the breeze in the tree-tops 
far below me in the ravine. When the wind 
ceased, the hush was wonderful. In so vast a 
space it seemed as though some voice of nature 
must make itself heard; but above, below, 
northward towards Canada, eastward towards 
the ocean, southward, where Winnepesaukee's 
waters were too dazzling to watch, and west- 
ward, among the snowy ravines of clustered 
mountains, all was absolute repose and silence. 
Not a bird or an insect was to be seen, and the 
stiff spruces were as motionless as the rock from 
which they sprang. The peak was the most 
forceful element in the landscape. It seemed 
the embodiment of cold, silent strength. Nine 
tenths of its surface were pure white snow, one 
tenth black rock, whose steep faces or sharp 
angles refused to hold the snow. Rising fifteen 
hundred feet above the ledges on which I sat, 
yet being not more than half a mile from me, 
its massive presence was not only impressive 
but oppressive. I felt as though it might fall 
and crush me to powder. 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 207 

Across the eastern valley, filled with its white- 
stemmed birches and poplars, rose a forbidding 
line of snowy cliffs. Of all the buttresses which 
prop the peak, this lofty ridge of nude rock is 
the most inaccessible and sullen. Now and then 
a bear is seen traversing its danger, nis faces in 
search of berries, but man rarely steps upon it. 
ever-visible but repellent heights. 

Looking away from the sun, all the world was 
white or gray; looking towards it, deep violet 
tones predominated, while from between the 
hills many lakes flashed towards me the slant- 
ing, dazzling rays of the low-hanging sun. So 
dark was the south that I found it hard to real- 
ize that the hour was but one o'clock and the 
sky cloudless. In six weeks the sun will be 
even lower, the violet shadows deeper, and 
midwinter will rule the whole of the frozen 
land. 

When I opened my lunch, a house-fly came 
to share it with me. Omnipresent and much 
enduring insect, for once he was welcome, and 
I felt as though a companion sat with me. In 
the rock upon which I rested there was a little 
rift, filled with water upon which floated a fish- 
shaped cake of ice. This was my punch-bowl, 
and never thirst found sweeter, purer draught 
for its quenching, than came from that heaven - 
filled and frost-cooled cup. I wanted to bless 



208 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

it, but found it blessing me, for it was much to 
me, while I was nothing to it. Rift and rock 
were there before I took breath, and they will 
be there centuries after I am a vanished mote 
in the sky. Just as I left the ledge, homeward 
bound, a bird call rang out sharply. I listened 
and a low tremulous song came from the 
spruces. Sweeping their serrated border with 
my glass, I found the birds and recognized 
them ere they flew, uttering the same sad plaint 
I had heard an hour before. They were a pair 
of pine grosbeaks, "winter robins" as the 
farmers call them; one a male, with his rosy 
breast, the other his Quaker mate. Flinging 
themselves into space, they flew southwestward 
till my glass could follow them no longer. 

Passing through the beech woods on my way 
down the mountain, I noticed how much more 
firmly the leaves clung to the young trees than 
to the older ones. Many of them, if pulled 
steadily by the tip, tore sooner than give way 
at the stalk. On oak and poplar sprouts or 
suckers, the leaves remain much longer than on 
old wood ; they keep their rich coloring far into 
November, and they are often very conspicuous 
by reason of their great size. 

I found more life stirring in these beech 
woods than anywhere else. Squirrels both red 
and gray were hard at work upon the ground, 



CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER. 209 

gathering winter stores. A fine gray, on seeing 
me, scrambled to the high leafless limbs of an 
oak, becoming there much more conspicuous 
than he had been among the fallen leaves. 

This autumn a farmer shot a gray squirrel and 
hung it in his shed. The cat stole the squirrel 
and shared it with her family. Next day, puss 
went gray-squirrel hunting, and to the farmer's 
astonishment captured her game and brought 
it home. The squirrel was so large that the cat, 
to avoid tripping over it, walked backwards 
much of the way, pulling it after her. Thus 
far for her thriving family puss is said to have 
secured six gray squirrels. 

A friend of mine, while hunting this fall in 
a grove of oaks, noticed a large gray squirrel 
coming directly towards him through the woods, 
pursued by a red squirrel. Chickaree soon saw 
his danger and stopped, but the gray came 
slowly on, as though searching for something. 
The hunter stood motionless, wondering. Nearer 
and nearer came the inquisitive squirrel, until it 
reached the man's feet and sniffed at his gun- 
stock. Its eyes seemed to have been injured or 
to be partially covered by a morbid growth. 
The moment the man moved in an effort to 
catch the creature alive, it bounded from him 
and disappeared. 



210 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

The perfect clearness of the sky lasted until 
nightfall, then a narrow line of golden orange 
light separating a pale silvery sky from a deep 
violet earth was all there was of sunset. 



AMONG THE WIND-SWEPT LAKES. 

The first thing which I saw as I opened my 
eyes Monday morning was the tip of Passacon- 
away's pyramid, rosy with the sun's earliest 
rays, and hanging like a great pink moon be- 
tween the soft gray of a hazy sky and the cold 
gray of the misty forests. It was a soft morn- 
ing with a southerly wind and a cloudy sky, 
yet with a chill in the air which hinted of snow. 
As the damp wind swept across the snow-cov- 
ered peak of Chocorua, its moisture was con- 
densed, and from the rock, trailing away north- 
eastward like a huge white banner, a cloud 
streamer waved for an hour in the hurrying 
wind. Then the peak was overcome by the 
cloud and hidden for the rest of the day in a 
slowly thickening and descending pall. 

In all the years which I had spent in wan- 
dering over these fair hills, I never had explored 
Whitton Pond. Looking down upon it from 
the snow-covered mountain yesterday, it had 
seemed so pleasant to the eye that I determined 
to view it from all sides, and to see the mighty 
form of Chocorua reflected in its clear waters. 



212 AT THE NORTn OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Towards Whitton Pond, then, I directed my 
steps this gray morning. 

Taking the Conway road from the Chocorua 
House, I walked northward upon it rather more 
than three miles to what is known far and near 
in this country as the Bell Schoolhouse in Al- 
bany. Perhaps the bell uses its tongue in dark 
nights when the wild storm-wind sweeps down 
from Chocorua, and the forest groans under its 
stripes. Certainly its tones are not heard in 
the sunlit hours, as the bats in its belfry and 
the spiders in its schoolroom can bear witness. 

As I passed up the eastern side of Chocorua 
Lake, under the great pines which guard its 
shore, a flock of ducks rose from the water and 
flew towards the south, then wheeling, returned 
and vanished far in the north. There were 
seven of them, six flying neck and neck in an 
even row, and one lagging behind. The six 
were apparently snowy white with dark mark- 
ings on heads and wings; the laggard was dark 

colored. 

One often hears in February and March that 
signs of early spring are growing numerous, 
that red buds are swelling on the maples, cat- 
kins have come upon the alders, and that many 
another shrub or tree is pushing out its new 
life. Noticing the alder catkins swinging in 
the wind, I measured several and found them 



AMONG THE WIND-SWEPT LAKES. 213 

already from an inch to an inch and a half long. 
Some of the maples were noticeably ruddy in 
tone, so thick and red were their buds. Lucky 
it is for the grouse that buds do not wait for 
winter to go, before they pack away the sweet 
food of life under their snug jackets. The 
grouse could give an eloquent lecture on the 
pledges of the spring renaissance which are 
made every autumn by the budding trees. 

At the Bell Schoolhouse I took the rio-ht- 
hand road, crossed the Chocorua River, a slen- 
der run at this point, and almost immediately 
after turned again to the right, taking an old 
road leading eastward over the hills to Madison 
village. The road was a new one to me, but I 
knew that it led through one of the saddest 
regions in the Bearcamp valley. A generation 
ago the "North Division" was comparatively 
thickly settled. More than a dozen comfortable 
sets of buildings were tenanted on those sunny 
slopes. Children flocked to the little school- 
house, corn rustled in the fields, and farmer's 
"gee" echoed back to farmer's "wah-hish" 
from the plowings or wood-lot. Now the porcu- 
pine and the skunk, the chimney swift and the 
adder are the undisputed owners of the deserted 
farms. The people have gone as though the 
plague had smitten the land, and houses, barns, 
fences, bridges, and well-sweeps are mouldering 



214 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

away together. Why is it? Ask the West and 
the great cities, which between them have 
drawn the young blood from New England's 
rural families, leaving the old and feeble to 
struggle alone with life on the hills. A kind- 
lier region than this could be depopulated by 
such a process. 

The most remote and the highest farm in the 
North Division shone, as we approached it, 
like a brass button. Carpenters, painters, and 
home-makers had been at work upon it until 
the hills and trees knew it for its old self no 
longer. Nevertheless it was as empty and 
silent as the decaying farmsteads below. Gaz- 
ing from its terrace upon the far view of Ossi- 
pee Lake, the broad Bearcamp valley, and the 
semicircle of hills and mountains from Wake- 
field to Chocorua, I understood why its present 
owner came from the shores of Lake Michigan 
to spend his summer in its beautiful quiet. 

Behind this redeemed fragment of the North 
Division rises a granite ledge, from which 
matchless views of many mountains, lakes, and 
sleepy hollows can be obtained. I found the 
ledge covered with snow, and the spruce woods 
on its steep northern slope as full of snow as 
the thickets on Chocorua' s ridges. At this 
season a slight elevation and shade make all the 
difference between summer and winter. 



AMONG THE WIND-SWEPT LAKES. 215 

From the ledge I could see the whole of 
Whitton Pond, lying just below me. It looked 
like a silver Maltese cross with its four arms 
reaching out to the four points of the compass. 
A small island and one or two single rocks rose 
from its surface. At least three bluff head- 
lands, pine-crowned and rock-faced, stood out 
boldly into its waters. Just across its eastern 
side, and due north from the elevation upon 
which I was standing, rose an impressive hill 
whose precipitous southern side was formed of 
a series of polished ledges sloping directly 
towards the deep waters of the lake. In the 
depths below those ledges large trout are said 
to live in a state of haughty contempt for all 
except favored anglers. I once asked a native, 
presumably not a favorite of the Whitton Pond 
trout, whether he would advise me to go to the 
pond fishing. Turning his gray eye upon me, 
he said solemnly, "Young man, ef I had the 
ch'ice of fishing all day in Whitton Pond or in 
this sandy road, I 'd take the road every time." 

A logging road led from the back of the ledge 
down to the pond. In the dark spruces near 
the water stood a tiny and dilapidated log hut 
and stable. So small was the hut, it seemed as 
though only one lumberman could have lived 
there. From the hut the road led straight to 
the lakeside, and to as lovely a view of the 



216 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

eastern flank of Chocorua as can be won any« 
where. All that I had imagined yesterday as 
I stood on those far ramparts was now made 
real. Here was the ruffled water, the pine- 
capped headlands, the guardian ledges; there 
was the stern fortress lifting its rock face and 
ragged outlines high against the sky. As the 
mists hurried over the peak, they suggested 
smoke from cannon fired from this Gibraltar 
of nature. Here and there spruces, standing 
in the clouds upon the edge of the precipice, 
looked like the dim forms of men guarding the 
heights. 

As the water was very low, a narrow pebbly 
and rocky strip of beach offered an easy way 
round the lake. I followed it through the east- 
ern coves to the northern shore, where the slip- 
pery ledges, one above another, hung over me. 
Many boulders of large size and odd outlines 
lay upon the shore, with the waves raised by the 
south wind splashing against them. Here the 
beach failed me, and I had to force my way 
westward through the woods and undergrowth 
to the outlet of the pond. Considering that the 
lake was about a mile square, the stream which 
escaped from it was singularly small. I crossed 
it with a single stride. At high water it is 
probably much larger, for a dozen or more great 
logs pushed far up on the rocks show that the 



AMONG THE WIND-SWEPT LAKES. 217 

rivulet of to-day gives no suggestion of the force 
of water sometimes at work. 

From the outlet to the highway was less than 
ten minutes' walk, a footpath bringing me to 
one of the many abandoned farms of unfortu- 
nate Albany. Unfortunate no longer, I hope, 
for with debt paid, taxes reduced, and lumber- 
ing on the decline, the township ought to revive, 
partly through ordinary settlement, but mainly 
through the influx of city people to one of the 
most beautiful spots in New Hampshire. 

My walk back to the hotel took me round 
Chocorua Lake, while pictures of Whitton Pond 
were still vivid in my memory. I confess to a 
sudden feeling of jealousy for the newly ex- 
plored pond when I looked at the simpler out- 
lines of my favorite water, and wondered how a 
wooded island and bluff headlands would be- 
come it. Whitton Pond is certainly too exqui- 
site a bit of nature to remain long a wilderness ; 
while to give up its lofty ledges to quarrymen 
would be little less than a crime. 

As I crossed the bridge between the lakes, 
the coloring was full of sadness. The long-de- 
ferred rain was coming across the mountains. 
Their tops were concealed, and only the dim- 
mest, most tearful vision of their flanks re- 
mained. Gray and cold, cold and gray, moun- 
tain, sky, forest, and lake, all were the same. 



218 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

The cry of a pileated woodpecker and the sput- 
tering complaint of a Hudson Bay titmouse 
rang in my ears. Birds of the north, strangers 
to these cherished spots, why were they here? 
Why were their voices full of weird warning? 
The rain came softly, surely onward, over the 
glassy water, and with a shiver I hurried to- 
wards the fireside. After all, men, like birds 
and insects, flowers and leaves, feel the chill of 
autumn and tremble at it. Full as the season 
may be of eternal promise, it is charged also 
with a message of present death and decay. 
Leaves wither and fall, flowers drop their petals 
and turn to seeds, the locust dies in the grass, 
the bird takes wing and saves his life by finding 
a gentler clime in the far south, and man, if he 
is to linger under Chocorua's lee, must gather 
his corn into barns, pile his shed full of wood, 
and fortify his mind to endure long nights, in- 
tense cold, deep snows, the wailing of wintry 
winds, and the gruesome voice of the lake as the 
ice throttles it. If the heart is brave and serene, 
there is peace in the long nights, pleasure in 
the cold, joy in snowshoe races on the snow, and 
exhilaration in the wailing of the wind and the 
moaning of the lake. As the viking exulted m 
sailing his ship through the fierce gale of the 
north, so his offspring can find joy in the win- 
try breath of Chocorua. 



'LECTION DAY, '92. 

Tuesday, the 8th of November, 1892, be- 
longs to history now, but when it began it was 
only an ordinary 'lection day. Floods of night 
rain had washed the high peaks clear of snow, 
and at dawn the golden clouds swept eastward, 
and the fairest of November days began its 
course. All the horses and all the men turned 
their noses towards the wooden town-house in 
Tamworth village; and by nine o'clock long 
lines of wagons streamed under the two cam- 
paign flags, across the bridge over rushing Pau- 
gus River, and up to the stores where the smoke 
of pipes and the sound of laughter proclaimed 
the swarming of man. It was an occasion of 
more than usual interest, for not only was the 
great ex-president to test his tariff-reform lance 
against the silver shield of his once successful 
rival, but New Hampshire in general, and Tam- 
worth in particular, were to try the Australian 
ballot system. 

"Now, Jim," said the committee-man, "re- 
member to make a cross against the name of 
every Democrat. Take your time, and look for 



220 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

the letter D. Wherever you see D, put down 
your cross." Then a sample ballot was dis- 
played to Jim, and that worthy child of Quebec 
proved the truth of his assertion that he could 
"read D in English evvy time, sir." 

Just before ten, the three stores gave up 
their crowds in favor of the growing swarm in 
front of the town-house. It was a strange com- 
mingling of men. The bone and sinew of rural 
New England were there, and so were the gristle, 
the fat, and the lean. Men well past ninety 
tottered feebly to the benches which flanked the 
broad open floor of the hall. Young fellows, 
just of age, stepped briskly in and went to the 
platform to see that their names had been 
duly added to the printed check-list of voters. 
Gaunt, loose-jointed, thin-faced men, in worn 
shoddy, the modern successor of honest home- 
spun, dragged themselves through the crowd, 
answering salutations with grim indifference. 
Big, burly men with broad, gray felt hats and 
scarlet flannel leggings strode in more confi- 
dently, fresh from the spruce woods. Well- 
dressed, clean-shaven men with city hats and 
big watch-chains shook hands with everybody, 
and with a hand on John's shoulder or Edson's 
elbow whispered a word in the young voter's 
ear. The New England farmer or lumberman 
does not ride horseback. He probably knows 



'LECTION DAT, '92. 221 

how well enough, but his roads have no clay 
mud, his wagon runs easily, so he drives instead 
of riding. Not one man in fifty owns a saddle. 
Who is it, then, that comes up the long street 
at a breakneck pace, with flapping hat, trailing 
whip, and rattling spurs? He rides well, and 
has a dashing air about him strangely in con- 
trast to the slouch of the man who always drives, 
with shoulders hunched and back curved. He 
proves to be a city man who has had enough of 
a ranch and is now extracting occupation from 
a farm and summer boarders. 

Now a silk hat and a satin necktie loom up 
in the throng. They grace a sleek son of the 
town who has a store "down country," but who 
comes home to vote. The silk hat looks 
strangely out of place among the well-worn felts 
and woolen caps which cover most of the heads 
in the crowd. 

The bell in the meeting-house tower moves, 
and then its clang strikes harshly on the ear. 
Half a mile away it would be sweet-toned ; here 
it is merely discordant. The men straggle into 
the town-house in large groups, and soon the 
room is crowded. Good air goes out by the 
chimney when the smokers come in by the door. 
The supervisors are in their seats, and an ex- 
cited discussion is taking place in which they 
and many in the crowd join. An oldish man 



222 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

and a foreigner who served in the late civil war 
has just produced his naturalization papers and 
demanded to have his name placed upon the 
check-list. The officers object, and point to the 
book of statutes open before them, where a sec- 
tion states that no name shall be added to the 
list at this late hour except by way of restoring 
a name wrongfully dropped from an earlier list. 
The claimant declares that his name was or 
ought to have been on an earlier list ; a candi- 
date for office springs upon a chair and shouts 
to the supervisors that he will "make it hot" 
for them if they refuse the veteran his suffrage ; 
the crowd cheers, and the officers yield. Then 
the warrant for the meeting is read, and imme- 
diately after an elder offers prayer, the hats and 
caps being doffed in obedience to a loud call of 
"hats off." The prayer is simple and earnest, 
asking for help in a freeman's highest duty. 
A moderator is chosen, and he delivers a brief 
and clear lecture upon the machinery of the new 
ballot law. Then a resolution is passed with a 
shout, allowing the old men to vote first, and 
the graybeards are pushed gently forward to the 
inclosed space in which the five little voting 
booths are built. 

The voters are kept waiting half an hour, be- 
cause at first no one can open the patent ballot 
box, but at last it gives way to some persuasive 



'LECTION DAY, '92. 223 

touch and the day's work is fairly begun. By 
noon about fifty men have passed the guard, 
taken their folded ballots, entered the little 
booths, and spent from two to ten minutes each 
in marking or trying to mark for their favorite 
candidates. 

"This is a great thing for the fools," said an 
old farmer; "they can look just as wise as the 
wisest of us, but they nor nobody else will ever 
know just who they voted for." 

One man, after entering the booth, came out 
and said he wanted some one to mark for him. 
"Step this way," shouted the moderator, "and 
take your solemn oath that you cannot read 
your ballot and must have help in marking it." 
"I won't swear to anything of the kind," said 
the man indignantly, and he went back to his 
booth. The crowd became impatient at the 
delay, and began to push hard for the narrow 
entrance. Strong men cried out in pain or 
anger; the stove tottered and part of the pipe 
fell, scattering soot on the nearest heads; the 
moderator thundered rebukes, and several men 
went home disgusted with the new-fangled sys- 
tem, only to be dragged back later by the com- 
mittees of their respective parties. 

Back of the town-house, Paugus River, well 
filled by the night's rain and the melted snow 
from the mountains, rushed noisily through its 



224 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

rock-choked bed. I escaped from the hustling 
crowd in the hot hall, and watched the eager 
current till my eyes and ears were cleared of 
smoke and empty laughter, and a taste of some- 
thing sweeter than politics was left on my 
tongue. The river, with its bright water, was 
following its course towards the Bearcamp and 
the sea, because for time out of mind it had 
flowed that way and knew no other. Most of 
the men inside the hall were acting their parts 
with much the same intelligence, and marking 
wherever they saw the letter R, or the letter D, 
not because they knew what those two great 
letters were struggling for this day in all the 
length and breadth of the Union, but because 
for years they had worshiped the one and hated 
the other with the fetich-maker's fervor. 

A bright-faced, blue-eyed committee-man, 
just old enough to cast his first vote for his 
party's hero, came to call me to the dinner set 
for those who had come from a distance to vote. 
After dinner I took my share of the bone-crush- 
ing process inside the hall, marked my long 
ballot, and started at once for the city. First 
my friend's wagon rolled along the pleasant 
Bearcamp valley to the pine plains. Turning a 
little aside, we drove past White Pond, a shal- 
low, mirror-like lake in the heart of the plain, 
framed in snowy sand and gaunt pines. The 



'LECTION DAY, '92. 225 

view of the Sandwich range across this lake is 
exquisite at all times, but to-day, with the dark 
blue water dancing towards us in thousands of 
foam-capped waves, and the mountains standing 
out sharply against the pale blue sky, it was 
more than usually charming. Half a dozen 
wood-ducks were floating in the midst of the 
restless waves, not far from the shore. They 
paid no heed to our wagon as it crept through 
the sand on the beach. 

When we reached the West Ossipee stage 
road I bade my friend good-by, and strolled to- 
wards the station alone. The south-bound train 
was not due till five, and it was now only half 
past two. The railway track was not more than 
half a mile distant across the pine plains, so, 
leaving the muddy road, I passed into the pines, 
following an obscure wood-path. 

Presently the path became plainer, and as I 
glanced along its vista, my eye caught a flash of 
bright yellow gleaming from something at a dis- 
tance. The object was shaped like a chimney, 
but it seemed to spring from the ground among 
the scrub-oaks. The path began to descend, at 
first gradually, then more abruptly, and I dis- 
covered that there was winding through the 
barrens ahead of me a small river, which a 
moment's consideration told me must be the 
Chocorua River, on its way to the Bearcamp. 



226 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Beyond the river was a small clearing and in it 
stood a red and white house with brilliant yellow 
chimneys. Then the land rose again abruptly, 
inclosing the little meadow and its cottage be- 
tween high walls of sand, scrub, and pines. 

Surprised to find an inhabited house in the 
heart of the plains, where I had supposed no- 
thing but mayflowers and chewinks lived to 
break the monotony of scrub and pine, I pushed 
on to learn more of the place. When the path 
came to the river it crossed by a rustic bridge 
formed of a large bow-shaped tree with pieces 
of board nailed to it, and a strong hand-rail 
braced among its broken branches. The bridge 
was really artistic, as well as ingenious in con- 
struction. From its farther end I could see the 
whole of the tiny valley of which the mysterious 
house was the gay capital. Five or six acres 
of grass-land and pasture were surrounded by 
woods and sand hills. Three cows fed along 
the river bank. Near the house was a neatly 
fenced garden, and as I came to the fence I 
found it crossed by a real stile with three steps 
up and two steps down, and a rail to lean upon. 

My approach had, ere this, attracted the at- 
tention of the inhabitants of the hidden valley, 
and five heads were visible at windows, house 
angle, and fence corners. I crossed the stile 
and gained the little piazza. The garrison 



'LECTION DAY, '92. 227 

massed around its commander and mother, who 
was ironing a white apron on the kitchen table. 
Strong, plump, and smiling, she was proud of 
her little army, — a boy of fourteen, with soft 
black eyes, black hair, and the rich color of the 
Acadian peasant glowing on his cheeks; three 
tow-headed girls, with their mother's blue eyes, 
and a fifth, a girl of two summers, with beauty 
and dignity enough for a duke's darling. No 
overtures of mine were sufficient to conquer 
this haughty little being's reserve. She would 
have nothing of me, and finally intimated a 
desire that I should move on, and leave her 
undisturbed in her apple-eating. This I did, 
taking a farewell look at the cozy house from 
the crest of the sand-hills which rose between 
it and the railway. From the ridge I could see 
many a mile of forest, and many a mountain 
peak, none fairer than Chocorua. A grouse 
rose from the scrub at my feet, and flew nearly 
an eighth of a mile before alighting. 

The little child's beauty haunted me as I 
strolled down the railway track, and I won- 
dered what her future would be if she grew up 
in that snug nook in the woods and sand ; what 
her character would be with its mingling of Cel- 
tic, Gallic, and Saxon elements; frozen in the 
northern winter and burned under the hot sum- 
mer suns of the Ossipee plains. 

At last the train came and bore me away 



228 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

towards the city. The sun sank in orange 
splendor behind the Ossipees, and then the 
night overwhelmed color and form in its shad- 
ows, and left the mind freer in its musings. 
What had the day brought forth at the polls? 
Had the party of past glories and present decay 
won another of its wonderful series of victories, 
or had the people risen in their might and 
spoken for reform? I hoped for some gleam of 
news before the journey was over, but Ports- 
mouth, Newburyport, Salem, and Lynn were 
all passed without tidings of what the day had 
done. Even in Boston, with its narrow streets 
filled with restless rivers of men and women, 
there seemed to be no word of victory or defeat. 
At half past ten I reached a small room high 
in one of the great newspaper offices on Wash- 
ington Street. Its windows looked out upon 
a strange sight. Far below me was a vast ex- 
panse of human heads upon which shone the 
bluish white glare of the hooded electric lamps. 
As white bubbles, densely spread upon the pale 
green of the ocean's water in some rock-rimmed 
grotto, surge now out, now in ; to left, to right ; 
advancing, retreating; crowding or separating; 
so those countless human heads swayed first one 
way, then another, moved by fickle eddies and 
forces hard to understand. Wild cries came 
from the crowd, cheers, jeers, and yells of pain 
or brutal merriment. 



'LECTION DAY, '92. 229 

Inside the room the wearisome clicking of a 
telegraph operator's machine charmed a circle 
of eager men and women. As sheet after sheet 
was written by the operator, they passed from 
hand to hand. Some of those present read 
them nervously, others, really intensely con- 
cerned, seemed almost indifferent. Now and 
then hearty applause greeted a dispatch, or 
deep regret was expressed at some friend's de- 
feat; but as a rule the fragmentary news was 
received silently. Midnight passed, and then, 
as the morning hours wore on, we knew that 
the people had achieved one of the most remark- 
able transfers of political power ever accom- 
plished in the Union. Still, the result in Mas- 
sachusetts was in doubt, and even those who 
watched until dawn finally sought sleep without 
knowing how the smaller cities had settled the 
great governorship contest. 

Before sleep came to me, a panorama of the 
day swept in feverish review across my closed 
eyelids. I saw the surging mob in Washington 
Street, the group around the telegraph machine, 
the motley crowd in the Tam worth town -hall, 
the baby beauty of the Ossipee plains, and then, 
like a benediction, came a vision of Chocorua, 
snow-capped and immutable in a pale blue sky, 
with the rosy light of the clear November morn- 
ing flooding its wondrous peak. 



A WINTRY WILDERNESS. 

North of the Sandwich Mountains, inclosed 
by a circle of sombre peaks, there once lay a 
beautiful lake. Centuries ago its outflowing 
stream, now called Swift River, cut so deeply 
between the spurs of Chocorua and Bear moun- 
tains that the greater part of the lake drained 
away into the Saco at Conway, leaving its level 
bed a fair and rich-soiled intervale. 

By the road upon which the lake went out 
man in time came in, and founded in the bosom 
of the spruce-grown mountains a small but 
comparatively prosperous settlement. Having 
seen this hidden valley in summer, and taken 
account of its rare beauty and its remoteness 
from the wearisome machinery of the world, I 
yearned to know its winter charms, feeling sure 
that they would surpass those of summer as the 
fairness of snow surpasses the fairness of grass. 
Accordingly, in the latter part of December, 
1891, I went by rail with a friend to Chatauque 
Corner, and thence by sleigh up the weird pass 
between Chocorua on the south and Moat and 
Bear mountains on the north, gaining at night- 



A WINTRY WILDERNESS. 231 

fall a warm haven in one of the snug farmhouses 
in the middle of the intervale. 

The township of Albany knows no priest or 
physician, squire or shopkeeper, and in its coat 
of arms, if it had one, the plow and rifle, axe 
and circular saw, would be quartered with bear 
and porcupine, owl and grouse. From the head 
of the intervale the people are forced to travel 
nearly thirty miles to reach and bring home 
their mail and groceries. In spite of these 
drawbacks, the permanent residents are intelli- 
gent, thrifty, well-housed, and well informed 
of the world's doings. Though their only road 
to the outside is long and rough, they let no 
moss gather on it in summer, and no snowdrifts 
blockade it in winter. 

Setting out for this far valley in midwinter, 
I felt something of the explorer's thrill as he 
turns towards the unknown, and leaves home 
and comforts behind. The distant and the diffi- 
cult of attainment are always seen by the mind 
through a golden haze, and although no fair 
Lorna drew me to her rescue, and no lawless 
Doones barred my way through the grim passes 
which led to the valley, romance and the spice 
of danger seemed mingled with my enterprise. 
As the journey progressed, and one stage of it 
after another slipped past, unreal gave way to 
real, and commonplace supplanted marvelous. 



232 AT THE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

Even when night fell, as we entered the valley, 
the light which gleamed afar through the 
spruces told of hospitality as truly as the sleigh's 
ample furs spoke of comfort, and the keen wind 
of health. 

We reached the valley on the evening of Sat- 
urday, December 19, and enjoyed every mo- 
ment of our stay, which was prolonged until 
Saturday, the 2Gth. From my journal, written 
on the evening of each day, I take the follow- 
ing account of our wanderings. 

We left Chatauque Corner (Conway) at three 
o'clock, well packed in the fur robes of a com- 
fortable two-seated sleigh and drawn by a 
skinny graduate of a race-course. It was an 
ideal winter afternoon, blessing an ideal North- 
ern landscape. There were the broad Saco in- 
tervales flat with snow, the pale blue sky with 
a fringe of cloud-banks, and between intervale 
and sky, mountains of marble and ramparts of 
dark evergreens. Straight up the Saco valley 
the immense mass of Mount Washington rose 
against the sky. It was wholly covered by 
snow. On its left, Moat, like a breaking wave 
of the sea, was close at hand. On its right, 
Carter Notch, with walls of dull purplish-black 
spruce, reached to where stately Mount Pe- 
quawket reared its dark cone on high. The 
Saco splashed in its rocky bed. Every boidder 



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A WINTRY WILDERNESS. 233 

was glazed with white ice, and from the two 
banks of the stream, borders of ice reached 
towards each other, half concealing the greenish 
waters which lapped their edges. 

The sleighing was excellent. Not more than 
eight inches of snow had fallen during the week, 
and it was the first enduring fall of the season. 
It had been followed by a dash of rain and then 
a sudden freeze. After going a mile on the 
North Conway road, we turned to the left into 
a road leading westward towards the narrow 
pass between Chocorua and Moat. The im- 
mense crags of Moat frowned upon us. Then 
we plunged into a pine forest and felt the first 
chill of night. As we sped through the shadow, 
we passed the skinned carcass of an ox hung by 
its fore-legs to the limb of a pine. A strange 
slaughtering-place, and one to tempt sniffing 
foxes when night falls. A mile farther on, the 
skull of a bear grinned on the tip of a pole in 
the brush fence by the roadside. 

Music sounded in our ears, and far below the 
narrow road, which was grooved in the moun- 
tain-side, we saw Swift River plunging from 
ledge to pool on its way to the Saco. The Saco 
had seemed wild when we saw it in Conway in- 
tervale, but this stream's madness left it placid 
by comparison. Two steep slopes, glare with 
crusted snow, led down to the narrow channel. 



234 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

At their foot boulders of every shape and size 
fought the progress of the water. The stream 
dashed itself against them, hurling spray into 
the air ; the spray fell upon the snow and froze, 
fell upon the boulders and froze, or drained 
back into the stream, freezing in icicles of mar- 
velous forms. The water, colored doubtless by 
the mosses and weeds below its surface, was 
green, — a cold, pale green, — with something 
of the cruelty of a winter ocean in its tones. 
Now and then we met and passed sleds heavily 
laden with lumber or logs. One load of birch 
logs was on fire at the hinder end, and the driver 
was warming his hands at the blaze. A few 
poor farms lined the road at points where small 
patches of tillable land were to be found be- 
tween the rocky fingers of Moat. As we passed 
one of these farms a flock of two dozen or more 
snow-buntings rose from a field full of tall weed- 
stalks and whirled over us singing. Their 
sweet notes fell on us as holy water falls on a 
kneeling congregation. 

The road grew steeper, and then it crossed 
the river, passing through a huge covered 
bridge, and soon we found ourselves inside of 
the portals of Chocorua and Moat, with the 
high ridge of Bear Mountain, covered with 
black spruces, barring our westward way. The 
wall of sullen forest seemed without a cleft, yet 



A WINTRY WILDERNESS. 235 

the raging river which met us told of a way 
somewhere, to be found by retracing its channel. 

In the midst of this gloomy hollow in the 
hills we found a slab village. A dozen or fif- 
teen houses stood here, but no smoke curled 
from their chimneys. Last September every 
house was occupied ; now the foxes roam through 
the deserted settlement unmolested. The saw- 
mill which had created the village had been 
burned and the whole population had vanished 
almost as swiftly as the smoke of the ruins. 
Not so the hideous scars left by the lumber- 
man's axe. They will remain for many a day. 

By a series of sharp ascents we gained and 
passed through the rift in the mountain wall 
made centuries ago by the imprisoned waters. 
In this rift at the eastern foot of Bear Moun- 
tain, only a few steps from the roadside, 
are the picturesque falls of Swift River. The 
treacherous ice and the gathering darkness for- 
bade our going to the giddy margin of the fall, 
and we dashed on into the hidden valley, the 
narrow, mountain -girdled intervale of which we 
were in search. As we left the forest fringes 
of Bear Mountain behind us and emerged in 
the plain, a gorgeous winter sunset gave us 
welcome. Over the blue of the upper sky, in 
which Jupiter alone sparkled faintly, were scat- 
tered countless flakes of rosy cloud. Below 



236 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

them a broad black band of cloud cut the sky 
at the level of several mountain peaks, and be- 
low this sinister bar, showing only in the gaps 
between the mountains, was a space of greenish 
silver, into which thousands of spruces reared 
their slender spires. 

Taking fresh courage, our horse carried us 
over the fifteenth mile at racing speed. The 
road was level. On the right the flat, white 
intervale shone in the pale light as in distant 
ages the face of the great mountain lake shone 
in silent winter nights. Westward, across the 
end of the intervale, were Tripyramid, Kan- 
camagus, and Osceola mountains; northward, 
Green's Cliffs, Carrigain, Lowell, Owl's Head, 
and Tremont Mountain stood shoulder to shoul- 
der in double rank. Behind us, dark Bear 
Mountain concealed Moat, while spurs of Cho- 
corua reached down to the road. On the left 
was Paugus, crouching at the foot of Passa- 
conawajr, which dominated over the valley with 
gloomy majesty. A bright light gleamed 
through the spruces, the Carrigain House lay 
there between black forest and pale snow, May- 
hew's lantern swung to and fro, and his deep 
voice welcomed us to his cheerful home in the 
heart of the wintry wilderness. 

Those who live in the city have an idea that 
it is hard to keep warm in these northern farm- 



A WINTRY WILDERNESS. 237 

houses, with their single windows, thin walls, 
and wood fires. They are wrong. There is a 
degree of heat attainable in a small room, armed 
with an air-tight stove, which burns birch sticks 
or slabs almost as fast as they can be fed to it, 
that is able to hold its own against the equator 
at midsummer. It takes courage, on a cold 
morning before sunrise, to leave a warm bed to 
start a fire in one of these stoves ; but when the 
fire is fully aroused, cold is put out of the ques- 
tion, or at least out of doors. 

After a hot supper we put on our coats and 
furs and went out into the night. I had the 
same feeling of reverence and quiet that I have 
in going into a dimly-lighted cathedral. The 
stars flickered on high, the snow gleamed below, 
on every side mountain peaks guarded the nar- 
row valley. In the spruce woods, which reach 
from the road back to Paugus, the darkness was 
intense. We listened. At first there seemed 
to be no sound to hear. Then the whisper of 
Swift River came out of the north, and the bark 
of a dog far up the valley told of a fox prowling 
too near the farmyard. Suddenly, from a bank 
of silver light back of Carrigain, two long 
tongues of pallid fire shot upward into the sky 
and trembled there, only to disappear as 
abruptly as they came. Although the dim au- 
roral glow stayed in the north for some time, I 
saw no more radiating light. 



238 AT TEE NORTE OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

It was but little after eight o'clock when 
we sought sleep and found it quickly between 
feathers below and mighty piles of blankets and 
comforters above. 

Untroubled moonlight flooded Swift River 
intervale all night, and there was still more of 
moonlight than of daylight when our host came 
into our room in the morning to light our fire. 
The winter working - costume of our host de- 
serves mention. His brown cardigan jacket 
was not remarkable, but his legs were marvel- 
ously encased. They began at the body with 
ample woolen trousers, half way between the 
hip and knee gave way to tightly -fitting scarlet 
wrappings which reached to low rubbers, cover- 
ing the feet. Nimble of foot, and of wiry frame, 
the wearer of these remarkably unpuritanical 
nether garments was a most enlivening figure 
in the snow. 

Encouraged by our fire, we arose with the sun. 
The mountains in the north were bathed in rosy 
light. Dark as were their forests, each of these 
mountains presented snow - covered ledges, or 
avalanche scars white with snow. Upon these 
white surfaces the sunlight fell with that soft 
blush which makes a winter sunrise so charm- 
ingly full of promise. We hastened out of 
doors as soon as dressed, and were at once 
greeted by joyous voices. A red squirrel in 



A WINTRY WILDERNESS. 239 

the dark spruces was whirling his watchman's 
rattle ; far away in the forest a woodpecker was 
drumming on a resonant tree-trunk ; but near 
at hand, only across one snow-covered field, a 
chorus of bird voices quivered in the still, cold 
air. The air was cold, that was true. Zero 
was the point the mercury held to, and as we 
took long breaths of the pure air we spouted 
forth columns of white steam through our ice- 
hung beards. Trotting up the road, we sought 
the birds. We found them at the next farm- 
house, perched by dozens on plum-trees, maple 
saplings by the road, and on the tips of a row 
of spruces opposite the farmyard. Some were 
in the road, others in the dooryard on the soiled 
snow where oxen had stood. In all, over a 
hundred were present. As we drew near, they 
rose and flew in waving circles over us, every 
bird singing until the whole air seemed tingling 
with sound. Then they came down in undu- 
lating lines, curves, angles, and plunges, which 
turned aside into a second flight in the sunlight. 
As they settled in groups in the various trees, 
I swept my glass over one cluster after another. 
Crossbills were the most numerous species, with 
goldfinches a close second, and pine finches 
third. The crossbills were in all stages and 
conditions of plumage, from rich red males blaz- 
ing like dull coals plucked from the fire, to 



240 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

dingy brown. No white-winged crossbills seemed 
to be among them. Three months before, on a 
cold dewy morning in September, I stood on 
this spot and saw a flock of thirty crossbills in 
these same trees. Then a number of them were 
feeding in the edge of the pasture at a place 
where cattle had been salted in a shallow trough. 
I saw the birds tearing off fibres from the wood 
of the trough, so eager were they to get the salt 
which the wood had absorbed. This morning 
the salt trough was covered with snow, save one 
edge which protruded; but all around it the 
crossbills had trodden the snow into a path, 
showing that they were still salt-hungry. Act- 
ing upon this hint, I sprinkled the ground with 
grain and rock salt; but although birds were in 
all the trees, they paid no heed to my offerings. 
After watching the crossbills for nearly an 
hour we walked westward. The birds had been 
more restless than we. Few of them remained 
still more than two or three minutes at a time. 
With sharp calls the crossbills would dash off, 
followed by the finches, and together, or in scat- 
tered detachments, they would wheel from one 
quarter of the heavens to another, perhaps re- 
turning in a moment to the same perch, perhaps 
vanishing in distance, not to reappear for many 
minutes. All the time that they were on the 
wing the air was full of their fragments of music. 



A WINTRY WILDERNESS. 241 

Our way led for a mile through the level 
fields of the intervale. Five or six farmhouses 
or wood-cutters' huts faced the straight road. 
At almost every house a few birds were seen, 
probably parts of the main flock. We also 
caught a glimpse of a large flock of snow-bunt- 
ings flying helter-skelter over a field where yel- 
low grasses were waving above the snow. At 
length our road came to an end at the banks of 
Swift River near the upper end of the intervale. 
The river was shallow, and so was a broad 
brook flowing into it at this point. The latter 
we found no great difficulty in crossing dry- 
shod, by going from one pile of stones and ice 
to another. Beyond the stream we entered a 
bit of primeval forest, only partly destroyed by 
lumbermen of an earlier generation, who seem 
to have been less grasping than their successors. 
In these woods we heard bird voices, and recog- 
nized the "quank, quank" of the red-bellied 
nuthatch, and the " chick-a-dee-dee-dee" of the 
titmouse. To call them nearer I hooted like 
an owl, and soon after, sharp alarm whistles 
almost exactly like those of a robin came from 
some unknown birds in a bunch of firs at a dis- 
tance. Upon hooting again, I was pleasantly 
surprised to get a reply from a barred owl. A 
moment or so later we heard blue jays scolding 
him not far away. 



242 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

After strolling through these woods and along 
the edge of Sabba Day Brook for an hour we 
turned towards home, treading in our previous 
footprints and thus avoiding crashing through 
the brittle crust of the snow. On reaching the 
spot where the owl had hooted, I used my 
metallic bird whistles and drew a crowd of 
chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, and blue jays. 
Then I hooted, the jays scolded noisily, and 
soon the owl replied. He came nearer by de- 
grees, I hooting occasionally, he frequently. 
Finally he alighted in a tree just over us, but 
saw us at once and flew away. I continued 
hooting and he replied again, and came back 
within sight. Whenever he moved, the jays 
pursued him scolding, and they were still watch- 
ing him when we resumed our march towards 
home. 



CLIMBING BEAR MOUNTAIN IN THE 
SNOW. 

Monday, December 21. The moon ate up 
the clouds during the night, and at dawn the 
only remnants of what the evening before had 
looked like a storm were the cloud-caps upon 
Tripyramid and Kancamagus, and a band of 
mist across Church's Pond at the western end 
of the intervale. We were dressing about 
seven o'clock when our host came to our door, 
saying, "If you want to see a fox, come 
quickly." I ran into the east room and caught 
a last glimpse of Reynard trotting briskly over 
the snow towards the rising sun. He seemed 
to be following a scent which went in a some- 
what wavy line across the field. At eight 
o'clock, just as we were striding up the road to 
pay a visit to the crossbills, a wild cry rang 
from the forest and echoed from end to end of 
the valley. It was the voice of the timber-eater, 
coming northward by his tortuous path from 
Upper Bartlett, and calling for his day's food. 
The men at the lumber cars near our house 
bustled a little, and then started down the track 



244 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

to see the engine come in. On its arrival one 
heavily laden car was attached to it, and the 
train,' thus made up, at once started back. 
Meanwhile, we had met two tree sparrows by 
the roadside and seen our crossbills and gold- 
finches on their favorite trees. They had, ap- 
parently, eaten none of the cracked corn sprin- 
kled for them upon the snow. As the train was 
about to start, we boarded the engine and gained 
a promise from the engineer to let us out at the 
foot of Bear Mountain. Crossing Swift River, 
the train entered the spruce forest and began 
its winding journey towards Upper Bartlett. 
With my head out of the left-hand window, I 
absorbed all the novelty and beauty of the 
scene. Inside, the engineer sat at his window 
with his earnest eyes looking up the track, his 
strong hand upon crank or lever, and his face 
grave and quiet. The fireman poured oil into 
the sucking cups above the boiler; then he 
clanked the chain of the furnace door, peeped 
into the raging fire within, hurled into ft a 
shovelful of coal dust, rammed it home with 
the poker, worked the movable lever which 
dumped ashes, and again poured oil into the 
sucking, choking cups. 

Outside, the spruce forest hemmed us in, but 
rising above it headland after headland of black 
rocks, snow-incrusted ledges, and lofty spruces 



CLIMBING BEAR MOUNTAIN IN THE SNOW. 245 

came into view, frowned upon us, and were left 
behind. A flock of blue jays crossed in front 
of the engine, a red squirrel whisked along a 
log by the track. Now the rails sloped up so 
that the engineer increased his power, then the 
track fell away so that all power was cut off. 
Trestle after trestle was crossed, strange piles 
of bark-covered logs which groaned under our 
weight as we rolled over them. 

After traveling four miles to get ahead less 
than two, the engineer stopped for us to begin 
our climb up Bear Mountain. He leaned out of 
his window, giving us advice and wishing us a 
fair trip. Then he applied the power, and the 
great mass moved on through the notch towards 
Upper Bartlett. This short piece of rough road 
is operated solely to carry out lumber and logs; 
but if people wish to ride, they are taken with- 
out charge. It is said that if the road refused 
to take them they could compel it to run pas- 
senger trains. 

The point at which the kindly engineer had 
stopped to leave us was the lower end of a series 
of lumber roads leading to the upper slopes of 
Bear Mountain. The mountain, once covered 
with an immense spruce forest, has now been 
stripped of the greater j>art of its valuable tim- 
ber. Beginning at the main road in which we 
stood, dozens of minor roads held the mountain 



246 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

in their embrace. They reminded me of the 
tentacles of an enormous devil-fish. Near the 
focus of all these roads we found a log cabin 
and stables. The cabin was one of the best I 
have ever seen. It was about sixty feet long, 
and contained a room at each end and roofed 
space in the middle open at front and back. 
Near the house we heard bird voices, and I at 
once used my Spanish whistles. The effect was 
excellent. Four or five red-bellied nuthatches, 
one white-bellied, and a small flock of pine 
finches responded. The siskins were very noisy 
and quite restless. They were feeding on the 
seeds and buds of a tall birch. Leaving the 
hut at nine o'clock, we strolled up the snow- 
covered roads. The voices of birds were ever 
in our ears. Squirrel and rabbit tracks, with 
now and then the tracks of a fox, followed or cut 
the roads. The snow was five or six inches in 
depth and covered by a thin and brittle crust. 
In many places numbers of well-filled beechnuts 
were strewn upon the ground. This is beech- 
nut year, and the squirrels have more than they 
can pick up. The snow in the road was easy 
to walk upon, the air was mild, the sun warm, 
the spruces rich with olive light and brilliantly 
contrasted with the deep blue sky against which 
our mountain towered. On each side of the 
narrow way "top wood" and branches were 



CLIMBING BEAR MOUNTAIN IN THE SNOW. 247 

piled in ramparts. The many roads reaching 
up the mountain are in places set so closely to- 
gether that their ramparts of top wood touch 
each other, forming almost impassable barriers. 
It was in one of these tangles that I discov- 
ered two small woodpeckers at work tapping 
upon the trunks of two unhealthy spruces 
spared by the axe. I saw at a glance that the 
birds were unfamiliar in coloring, and I crawled 
in among the top wood to examine them more 
closely. To whistles, hooting, and squeaks they 
paid no attention, but kept on hammering the 
trees until small flakes of loose bark flew at 
every blow. My crashing through snow and 
branches startled one bird, but the other stood 
his ground until I got within about fifteen feet 
of him. My glass brought out every detail of 
his plumage. Upon his head was a yellow cap, 
his throat was snowy white, his sides were 
finely, delicately barred with black and white, 
his back was largely black, but down his spine 
ran a belt of black and white cross-lining. In- 
stead of having four toes like the downy and 
other common woodpeckers, this stranger from 
the north had but three toes. He was the lad- 
der-backed woodpecker of the great northern 
forests. During the twenty minutes that I 
watched him he made no vocal sound, but 
worked incessantly, tearing away bark, and 



248 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

drilling into the trunk of the spruce. When 
he had inspected the tree to its highest part he 
flew several rods to rejoin his mate. 

At last the roads ended and we entered the 
remnant of dark forest which crowns the moun- 
tain. There was a chill in the gloomy shades. 
The snow was softer and deeper here. It cov- 
ered innumerable boulders closely wedged to- 
gether between the stems of the spruces. On 
the sides of these rocks we could see delicate 
mosses imprisoned in the ice and snow. At 
frequent intervals we encountered masses of 
fallen timber wrecked by hurricanes. Another 
obstacle to our ascent was the dense growth of 
young spruces which in places made walking 
almost impossible. In the edge of an open 
space in this forest we called together the birds 
by means of my whistle. A flock of j uncos 
appeared in a pile of top wood ; red-bellied nut- 
hatches came and clung head downwards on the 
nearest trunks and quanhed at us, kinglets bus- 
tled in, peeped at us, and bustled out, a dozen 
or more red crossbills alighted close above us 
and to our satisfaction made the note which 
had so puzzled us yesterday and which sounds 
like the robin's alarm-note. Best of all, a flock 
of sixty pine siskins came into the nearest trees, 
and one or two of them came down to the level 
of our heads and questioned us plaintively. 



CLIMBING BEAR MOUNTAIN IN THE SNOW. 249 

The body of sweet sound made in a conversa- 
tional way by these gentle, cheerful little birds, 
was amazing. 

We reached the summit at about noon, and 
were fully repaid for the three hours' climb. 
During the ascent, charming views of Passacon- 
away, Tripyramid, Kancamagus, and the daz- 
zlingly white fields of the intervale had greeted 
us whenever we stopped to rest. Now were 
added Chocorua, Moat, Pequawket, Mount 
Washington and his supporting mountains, the 
Franconia group, Carrigain, and the Bartlett 
valley. Moat and Chocorua are much alike 
from this point of view. They are both com- 
paratively treeless mountains and were conse- 
quently snowy white. Their outlines suggest 
combing breakers. Chocorua, being under the 
low-hanging sun, was reflecting light from 
every crusted snowbank and ice-wrapped 
boulder. It was like a mountain of cut glass. 
Mount Washington was unobscured, and in the 
noonday sun as colorless as summer clouds. 
This snowy whiteness of its upper mass wound 
in streams down its sides, as soft frosting pours 
in grooves down the sides of a birthday cake. 
Between these streams of whiteness ran upward 
long fingers of dark forest. Most of the other 
mountains in sight were wooded to their sum- 
mits, and so contrasted sharply in their sombre 
colorings with their snowy rivals. 



250 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

The narrow ridge which forms the top of 
Bear Mountain is blockaded by fallen timber. 
Squirming through the tangle, we saw all the 
views and then sat down in the sun on piles of 
spruce branches and ate our lunch. Having no 
water, we quenched our thirst by mingling snow 
with our bread and eating them together. As 
we ate and rested, looking across a wooded 
valley toward Carrigain and the Franconias, a 
flock of white-winged crossbills alighted above 
our heads and talked to us. Several were rosy 
males in the perfection of plumage. Many 
more siskins came and went, and so did a flock 
of four red nuthatches and several kinglets. 

Our descent was rapid and amusing. We 
plunged downward from tree to tree with long 
strides and slides, sometimes falling, often 
coasting faster and farther than we wished. 
Three more flocks of crossbills, many dozens of 
siskins, and a scattering of nuthatches glad- 
dened us as we pushed down the slopes. A 
hawk, too, came quitf near to us, soaring at 
last so as to clear the mountain's crest. He 
was rather small, and very quick and jerky in 
his wing motions. He circled from left to right 
in small curves. 

While walking home on the railway we were 
fortunate enough to call to us a small flock of 
pine grosbeaks, five or six only, and having no 



CLIMBING BEAR MOUNTAIN IN THE SNOW. 251 

red birds in their number so far as I could see. 
Red squirrels were ubiquitous. I think we 
saw, or heard the chattering of, at least twenty 
during the day. I have been told so often that 
chipmunks keep closely housed in winter that 
when one squealed at me from his hole near the 
track I did not trust either my own ears or 
those of my friend. Seeing is believing, how- 
ever, and a dozen or two rods farther on another 
chipmunk stayed on his log long enough for us 
to count his stripes and wish him a merry 
Christmas. 

We reached home at about half past four, 
just as the western sky was filled with rosy 
light by a sun already set. Venus, close to the 
dark rim of Passaconaway, and Jupiter, in the 
higher sky, summoned the stars to their posts, 
and encouraged us to beg for supper. 



IN THE PAUGUS WOODS. 

Just opposite our house, which stood on the 
north side of the road, facing south towards 
Paugus, was a black forest of spruces. Into 
this we plunged on Tuesday morning, not 
knowing what might lie within. The silence of 
the gloom was broken by the sound of falling 
bits of ice and drops of melting snow. Bird 
notes, too, could be heard, and now and then 
a red squirrel chattered. The trunks of the 
trees stood closely together, and thousands of 
small dead branches radiated from the trunks 
and interlaced, opposing our progress. The 
crashing of these twigs as we broke through 
them, accompanied by the crunching of th<* 
snow-crust under our feet, noisily announced 
our coming. At intervals we found masses of 
fallen timber, the wreck of fierce storms, and 
brooks covered with thin ice and misleading 
snow, through which we slumped into cold water 
beneath. Every few paces rabbit tracks dotted 
the soft film of snow which lay upon the crust. 
If the tracks which we crossed during our three 
or four mile walk could have been measured in 



IN THE P AUG US WOODS. 253 

all their meanderings, I think the aggregate of 
miles traversed by the rabbits of that locality 
would have been found to rival the railway 
mileage of New Hampshire. From time to 
time we stopped to call birds to us by the aid 
of my whistles. I think I called eight or nine 
times, and in each instance birds appeared 
promptly. Usually pine finches came first, 
whirling through the upper air like burnt paper 
driven by the wind. As they passed over us, 
they would catch the sound of the whistles more 
distinctly and begin a series of undulatory cir- 
cles. Then one or two would drop straight 
down into a leafless tree, or upon the tips of 
the spruces, and the rest would follow them, 
sometimes twenty going into one tree. Their 
sweet queryings filled the air, and drew other 
birds to the focus of sound, among others a 
number of purple finches and a white - bellied 
nuthatch. Kinglets came very near to us when 
we were well hidden ; so near that the brilliant 
color on their dainty heads could be seen with 
perfect distinctness. There were more chicka- 
dees in these woods than in the other places we 
had visited, and I examined them all with great 
care, hoping to find a Hudson Bay titmouse. 
Two flocks of the common species came, and 
produced no northern birds, but at a third rally 
of nuthatches, finches, and kinglets, a strange 



254 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

voice made itself heard. I knew it for some- 
thing different from a chickadee at once, and 
yet it was titmouse language. Squeaking vig- 
orously, I called the stranger down to me. At 
first I thought it was a chickadee ; then he sput- 
tered out his ''''dee-dee " and showed his brownish 
head and great chestnut patch on his flank, and 
I knew he was from Hudson Bay. Three others 
joined him and gave me ample chance to inspect 
their points. I had the feeling that they had 
less character and spirit than our blackcap tit- 
mouse. Their voices were weaker and more 
petulant and their general appearance less posi- 
tive and aggressive. 

Once I caught a glimpse of a big white hare 
bounding away from us through a jungle of 
young spruces. He was so nearly the color of 
the snow that my eyes found it difficult to follow 
him. 

After going rather more than two miles 
through the spruce tangle, we entered an old 
logging road much used by rabbits, foxes, and 
grouse, and, following it northward, we made 
our way home. 

About 3.30 P. M. the baying of a hound at- 
tracted our notice, and I walked up the road to 
see what he was doing. He soon appeared at 
the edge of the spruce woods, and I followed 
him into their dark shades. After a moment's 



IN THE P AUG US WOODS. 255 

hesitation he took the back track and was soon 
almost out of earshot on a hot scent. Not long 
after, my friend left the house and, crossing 
Swift River by the railway bridge, followed the 
rails northward through the forest. Soon he 
heard the hound baying to the eastward, down 
river. Then a snapping of branches and crunch- 
ing of crust came to his ears, and a moment 
later a deer broke through the bushes, dashed 
up the embankment, and, turning at right an- 
gles, came in weary leaps towards him. My 
friend stood perfectly still, too much astonished 
to move. The deer came to within twelve paces 
of him, then saw him, and with a bound left 
the track and plunged into the woods on the 
western side. A few moments later the hunters 
came up and my friend demanded what they 
were doing, and whether the hound was their 
dog, in so severe a tone that the poachers de- 
nied their interest in the dog and made off into 
the woods. Meanwhile, I wandered southward 
through the spruces, now hearing the hound, 
now losing his melancholy baying. No small 
birds were to be seen or heard. They had van- 
ished to their night abiding-places. Two grouse 
rose noisily and went into the tops of the trees. 
Red squirrels continued to bustle about until 
after dusk. As light faded in the sky, the for- 
est grew very dark, and fallen trees, stumps, 



256 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

and bushes rearranged themselves into weird 
shapes which seemed to move against the vague 
background of the snow. The silence of the 
cold black and white woods became oppressive, 
and the chill of night increased moment by mo- 
ment. The baying of the hound, lost to the 
eastward, had come again from the north, and 
finally moved over towards the west. It was 
after five o'clock, and the dog had followed his 
chase since eleven. Standing still, listening to 
the hound, and peering into the trees in search 
of the grouse, I began to grow drowsy, and to 
long to sink down upon the soft snow and go to 
sleep. It required a strong effort of will to 
rouse myself and to start my benumbed feet 
upon their homeward way. As soon as I moved, 
the grouse, which had been budding in a high 
maple, flew away deeper into the gloom, and 
then utter silence settled down upon the deserted 
forest. 

When we awoke, December 24, the day prom- 
ised to be fine. Blue sky covered the area above 
Carrigain, and a cool west wind swept across 
the fields from which much of the snow had 
disappeared. We had planned to climb another 
of the mountains near the railway track, but 
while we were breakfasting, the engine came in, 
and, finding no cars loaded, went out again at 
once. By nine o'clock clouds had gathered and 



IN THE PAUGUS WOODS. 257 

caps had settled down upon many of the peaks. 
We heard crossbills calling as we left the house. 
Their short, sharp call is much like the English 
sparrow's alarm-note. A flock of nine settled 
on the spruces by the salting-trough as we went 
past. One was a red bird, two had a trace of 
red, five were brown, with some streaking on 
the sides of the breast, and one was quite yel- 
low. One of them was gnawing a long shoot of 
spruce which had already been chewed free of 
needles and left brown and forlorn. Unfortu- 
nately we took a dog with us, a black mongrel 
with pleading eyes and no wisdom. He loved 
to zigzag over the country in front of us, and 
to bark at red squirrels. He was a nuisance, 
but very sweet - tempered, as many fools are. 
We took him, hoping that he might hunt rab- 
bits, but we wished him in Jericho long before 
the forenoon was over. 

Although cloudy all day, no rain fell until 
evening ; consequently birds were astir and abun- 
dant. We left the highway at a point where 
an old logging road led southward through the 
spruce swamp, parallel to a stream bearing the 
odd name of Oliverian Brook. Continued far 
enough over ledges and through "harricanes," 
the road would pass between Paugus and Passa- 
conaway and come out into the Birch Intervale, 
Tamworth. After going in for a couple of 



258 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

miles the road bends to the left, following the 
east branch of the Oliverian Brook up to the 
spruce forests on Paugus. 

We made our first halt in a dense spruce and 
hemlock thicket and called for birds. They 
came from all quarters until dozens of the usual 
kinds were around us. After a while seven or 
eight blue jays flitted past, one by one, at- 
tracted mainly by my hooting. They came 
within easy gunshot and peered at us with sus- 
picion and anger in their wicked eyes. They 
are viUains in spite of their attractive dress. 
Suddenly they flew with cries of alarm, and I 
saw a large light-colored hawk sweep past and 
alight in a tall dead tree just out of range. 
The dog at this crisis made his appearance and 
rushed back and forth with ill-timed energy. 
The hawk flew a little farther away and was 
on his guard against stalking. The jays also 
vanished, and soon the smaller birds left also. 
Among the latter was one Hudson Bay tit- 
mouse. 

In the depths of the spruce swamp the snow 
had not wasted much, and it was soft enough to 
take the imprint of passing feet. We found 
the tracks of a deer, a mink, and a 'coon. 
Foxes, rabbits, squirrels, mice, and grouse had 
been that way also. Several times, in crossing 
fresh fox tracks, I got a whiff of odor which I 



IN TEE PAUGUS WOOES. 259 

fancied might be that of the fox. It suggested 
the smell of hamamelis. The swamp trees were 
draped with gray moss, one of the most striking 
of nature's decorations in this latitude. Many 
of the trees were thickly grown with green 
lichens, which, being wet, were two or three 
times as bright in coloring as when dry. In 
spots where the snow had melted, showing 
patches of the swamp floor, mayflower, checker- 
berry, ranunculus, partridge-berry, ferns, and 
other leaves showed their vivid coloring, or 
were replaced in very damp ground by sphag- 
num. 

As we neared the slopes of Paugus the trees 
became larger and the forest clear of under- 
growth. Our road — a very old one — was 
most clearly marked by being densely grown 
with weeds, and an inferior crop of trees and 
bushes. As compared with the clear forest, 
the road was a ribbon-like jungle. Its young 
growth was composed of viburnums, slender 
maples, and cherry - trees. Spots where the 
cattle had been fed could be picked out by 
means of the asters, clover, and other flowers 
and weeds which had sprung up from the seeds 
sown by the fodder. 

In the edge of the high growth we halted a 
second time, and called the birds together. 
They failed not to respond, and when their 



260 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

chattering was at its height the familiar "who- 
hoo, hoo-hoo, who-hoo-hoo-hooo" of a barred 
owl was heard. The birds became silent and 
most of them disappeared, perhaps to scold the 
real owl. Many of the trees in this belt of 
forest were nearly a hundred feet in height. 

Well up towards the high ridges of Paugus 
our road crossed the Oliverian Brook. The 
point chosen twenty years ago by the lumber- 
man-engineer for building his bridge was a 
ravine of singularly picturesque character. 
Thirty feet below its two precipitous banks the 
noisy torrent struggled among its boulders. 
Dozens of dark spruces overhung it, and rank 
upon rank of evergreens lined the banks. In 
the bed of the brook the lumbermen had built 
up in "cob-house" fashion two log abutments 
about twenty-five feet high. From each bank 
immense logs were run out to rest upon the 
abutments, and similar logs formed the central 
span. Then scores of shorter logs were laid 
across from girder to girder, and all were firmly 
bound together by heavy side-logs laid on top 
of and parallel to the girders. We decided to 
cross this bridge, although it was falling to 
pieces. Many of the short logs had rotted off 
and fallen through. We walked upon the gir- 
ders, the whole bridge trembling ominously 
under our tread. Our dog, foolish as he was, 



IN THE P AUG US WOODS. 261 

knew enough not to cross this bridge, for after 
inspecting it he whined, ran down the bank, 
plunged through the stream, and clambered up 
the other side. 

At half past two we had reached rather high 
land. The road was fast climbing the flank of 
Paugus, following a minor branch of the Oli- 
verian Brook. Just across this little run rose 
the gloomiest grove of spruces we had seen. It 
stood upon a bank fifty feet above the road and 
brook. I clambered up to it, and forced my 
way through its dense tangle. To my surprise 
I found that it was only about thirty feet wide, 
growing on a mere tongue of land between two 
mountain gorges. On the farther side the land 
fell off abruptly two or three hundred feet, and 
down in the shades below still another branch 
of the Oliverian fretted in its bed. Beyond it 
•was another ridge, over which, a mile and more 
away, grim Passaconaway frowned across at 
me. A white cloud-banner streamed from his 
spruce-crowned head. To the serious detriment 
of my clothes I climbed a tall spruce on the 
edge of the ravine in order to determine our 
position. Behind us was Paugus, its summits 
within comparatively easy reach. From them 
I could have looked down at my snow-covered 
home by Chocorua lakes. Westward, just 
across the forest basin on whose edge we stood, 



2G2 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

was Passaconaway. Northward the eye wan- 
dered downward over gently sloping tree-tops 
to the broad snowy intervale with its cozy farms 
and its one long, straight road, running from 
west to east, from the forests by Sabba Day 
Brook, down Swift River, through its gorges 
towards Conway. Above and beyond the inter- 
vale were the northern mountains which lock 
it in from the rest of the world, — Bear Moun- 
tain on the right, then Owl's Head, Carrigain, 
Green's Cliffs, Sugar Hill, and Kancamagus. 
The notch east of Carrigain is one of the grand- 
est rifts in the White Mountain panorama. It 
is like a black gateway opened for storms and 
wailing winds to sweep through. 

The black grove on its narrow tongue of 
land hanging between two gorges was alive with 
birds, and I fancied it to be their sleeping-place. 
Chickadees, kinglets, and a brown creeper were 
in possession and resented my intrusion. It 
was just such a place as I have always imagined 
a small bird's dormitory to be. 

We returned, descending by another logging 
road leading due north to the intervale road 
about a mile below the Carrigain House. This 
logging road is one of the most picturesque I 
have ever seen. It follows closely a brook of 
considerable size which is one long series of 
pools, falls, and dashing rapids. The forest on 










«ggp 



■ 



y "Sv-<> 











FROST-COVERED SPRUCE NEAR THE SUMMIT OF 
PASSACONAWAY 



IN THE P AUG US WOODS. 263 

both sides of the brook bed is of high growth 
and generous proportions. Every few moments 
a vista view of Bear Mountain charmed us as 
we wound down the steep incline, while behind 
and above us the ledges of Paugus, gleaming 
with ice and capped by snow, showed at inter- 
vals through the trees. 



AT THE FOOT OF PASSACONAWAY. 

Wednesday, December 23, dawned under a 
damp sky. Tripyramid kept on his nightcap, 
and patches of mist clung to the dark precipice 
of Passaconaway. The mountains looked 
higher and more threatening than on previous 
days, and they seemed closer to us than when 
the sun shone. A whisper of falling drops and 
settling snow ruffled the morning calm. Nev- 
ertheless, patches of blue sky showed in the 
west, and once or twice a silvery spot in the 
clouds suggested the sun's burning through. 
We went first to see our favorite flock of birds 
at the cattle-trough in the pasture. They were 
there in full force, nearly if not quite a hundred 
strong. They allowed me to come within about 
twenty feet of them, and to watch them nar- 
rowly through my glass. Rather more than 
half were red crossbills. Of the remainder, 
two thirds were pine finches, and one third gold- 
finches. No red-polls were to be seen. The 
coloring in the crossbills was amazingly diverse. 
There were very brilliant males with cinnabar 
tints wherever such color is ever found. From 



AT THE FOOT OF PASSACONAWAY. 265 

this maximum of intensity their coloring graded 
downward through partial red markings on the 
one hand, and through gradually fading red 
markings on the other. I saw one bird with 
red on his rump only. The fading from red to 
yellow yielded many gradations of red and yel- 
low or orange down to pure gold. The brown 
birds were the more numerous, and they seemed 
to have various combinations of light and dark, 
with now and then suggestions of bright tints. 
In some individuals the mandibles crossed in 
one way, and in others the opposite way. In 
size the crossbills varied widely. Often, in 
glancing quickly at a group, I mistook the 
smaller, duller birds for pine finches. A dozen 
times in as many minutes the flock whirled up- 
wards and round and round, showering the air 
with their delicious medley music. Generally 
from three to six old birds remained in one of 
the two spruces near the fence by the trough, 
and a sharp call from them brought the flock 
down again like a fall of hail. 

When we had walked a mile up the valley a 
shower struck us, and we waited a few moments 
under the shelter of an old house from which 
the wall boards had been removed. We heard 
sweet bird notes, but could not locate the sing- 
ers. When we turned to go, however, a flock 
of sixteen snow-buntings rose from a field where 



266 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

they had been feeding in the yellow grasses, 
and vibrated away with merry calls until swal- 
lowed up in fog and rain. 

The wasting of the snow under the hot sun 
of Monday and the cloudy sky but mild air of 
Tuesday had left many plants and dried flower- 
stalks exposed to view. Plum-colored masses 
of berry bushes encroached upon the wide ex- 
panse of snow as headlands reach out into a 
calm sea. Tiny forests of wiry grass reared 
their heads above the snow. In color they were 
what is called "sandy." Goldenrod and aster 
stems, holding aloft dry and brittle suggestions 
of long-lost flowers ; the heads of brunella, look- 
ing like chess castles, and of the Indian pipe, 
upright and pineapple-shaped; and many deli- 
cate hairlike stems from which all trace of leaf 
and flower had departed, broke the evenness of 
the snow fields, and were beautiful in an unas- 
suming, unconscious, unintentional way. In- 
deed, many of them had never shone with 
beauty before. In summer, submerged in the 
wilderness of green things which crowd the 
unplowed intervale, they could not have been 
found by the eye of any one in chance passing. 
But in winter, the time of their nominal beauty 
gone, they lingered in their old age, and looked 
more beautiful in their bleached simplicity than 
those summer flowers which never gave them a 
chance to reveal what was in them. 



AT THE FOOT OF PASSACONAWAY. 267 

At the end of the intervale, instead of plung- 
ing into the woods where our barred owl lived, 
we turned southward towards the foot of Passa- 
conaway. The rough road led through the for- 
est to a saw-mill under the shoulder of the first 
ridge of the mountains. Downes Brook had 
been partially dammed to form a pond, upon 
which hundreds of logs lay awaiting their fate. 
At the foot of the dam stood the mill. Its 
lower story was an engine-room. A steam-en- 
gine of considerable power worked four saws, a 
planer, and an endless chain used to draw in 
logs from the ice. At the dam end these logs 
were being drawn in upon the floor, measured, 
and marked. Then they went to the first and 
largest saw, which cut off their slabs, reduced 
them to boards or planks, and sent them along 
to the second saw to have their ends squared. 
From the second saw they went to the third, 
where their sides were made equal, and hence 
through the planer, out at the lower end of the 
mill, down a chute to a platform where they 
were piled, ready to be hauled away. The 
fourth saw was used to cut the slabs and edge- 
cuttings into the right lengths for fuel ; for not 
only the engine demon in the under story fed 
on wood, but all the people in the intervale 
burned slabs. About twelve men were em- 
ployed in the upper part of the mill, some 



268 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

Americans, some French Canadians, and some 
Irishmen. One young Frenchman was a pic- 
ture of dirty beauty and health. His jet-black 
hair, reeking with oil, was plastered in a curve 
over his forehead. His mustache was curling, 
and his snapping eyes, dark skin, rosy cheeks, 
and powerful but rather gross body made a 
striking picture for a day laborer. 

Leaving the mill with its distracting noise, 
we ascended the main logging road towards 
Passaconaway. It follows Downes Brook south- 
ward, now clinging to one hillside, then cross- 
ing the ice-bound torrent by a rude but massive 
bridge of spruce logs to stay for a while on the 
opposite bank. On each side the timber had 
been cut and hauled away. The survival of the 
unfittest is the rule in the forest after the lum- 
ber thief has been through it. He leaves the 
crooked, the feeble, and the diseased trees, and 
packs around their roots the fertilizing branches 
and tops of the logs which he hauls away. On 
our way up we met several teams coming down 
the slippery, sloppy road. Two strong Cana- 
dian horses, low sleds, three great logs chained 
together and to the sleds, and an oily, tobacco- 
chewing French Canadian made up a team. 
We stopped and talked to one driver, who said 
that if the snow went off they woiild keep on 
with their hauling, using the runners on the 



AT THE FOOT OF PASSACONAWAY. 269 

bare ground. While he chatted with us he fed 
his nigh horse on pieces of chewing tobacco, 
which the horse took from his fingers or bit 
from the plug. We were told later that this is 
a common form of attention for the drivers to 
show their favorite horses. The horse swallowed 
the tobacco. About half a mile above the mill 
we came to the logging camp. There was a 
compact log stable, a log smithy manned by a 
sturdy Frenchman in moccasins who spoke very 
little English, and a living-house made of slabs 
covered with tarred paper well battened down. 
The house stood on a ribbon of ground between 
the road and the steep edge of the torrent. 
Entering through a low shed at the southern or 
upper end of the shanty, we found ourselves in 
the kitchen and dining-room. The room con- 
tained two cook-stoves and three long, narrow 
board tables with benches facing them. The 
tables were set for thirty-five men, allowing 
about twenty inches of space for each man. 
We were welcomed by the cook, a New Eng- 
lander, who boasted of having cooked in lumber 
camps for twenty years. He prided himself on 
his bread, and cut a loaf to show its quality. 
I never ate better bread anywhere. The dishes 
on the table were simple, — tin plates, tin cups, 
bottles of vinegar, pitchers of maple syrup, tins 
holding mountains of yellow butter, and plates 



270 AT TEE NORTH OF BE ARC A MP WATER. 

piled high with "fried holes," as doughnuts are 
graphically termed. Baked beans are a staple 
dish, but I noticed a barrel of pork at the door, 
and lying on the woodpile a big bundle of cod- 
fish and a side of beef certified as good by the 
Hon. Jere. Rusk. 

The sleeping-room of the camp was not at- 
tractive. It was dark, hot, stuffy in odor, and 
overcrowded. Rude bunks, three tiers deep, 
lined the side walls. The men turn into these 
pens with their clothes on, often wet with rain 
or snow. Teamsters are roused at four a. m. ; 
the rest of a "crew" somewhat later. In win- 
ter, four a. M. and midnight are equally 
gloomy, and if either is colder it is the morning 
hour. The cook said he could remember but 
one case of serious illness in his logging camps. 
The grip, he said, seldom kept a man from 
work more than one or two days. He expressed 
great fondness for birds, and spoke of the daily 
visits of crossbills, and in some years of moose- 
birds. "They know their friends, as most 
dumb beasts do," he declared, and went on to 
tell of a terrible storm of snow and sleet which 
came one winter, threatening death to his pets. 
"I just opened my camp doors and called and 
whistled to my birds, and in they came, dozens 
of 'em, until every beam and perch in the camp 
was full of 'em." 



AT TEE FOOT OF PASSACONAWAY. 271 

We strolled up the road for a mile or more 
beyond the camp. At several points deposits 
of logs had been made at the sides of the road. 
Several hundred logs lay in each pile. Near 
by, hemlock bark was stacked in long rows, 
flanking the road. We crossed the torrent 
twice on spruce bridges, and each time gained 
a magnificent view of Passaconaway. It was 
framed in black clouds, rushing masses of vapor, 
and dark hillsides still laden with forests. In 
the foreground was the foaming stream, boulder- 
choked, bounding towards us. From this side 
Passaconaway shows no peak; it is simply a 
somewhat worn cube, to whose precipitous faces 
the forests cling and the snows freeze. Its 
coloring is dark in any light, but as we saw it 
through the gathering storm of that late Decem- 
ber day a more forbidding mountain mass could 
hardly be imagined. It was so near us, yet so 
high above us; so black, so cold, so lonely, yet 
so full of nature's voices, the wailing of wind, 
the cruel rush of waters, the weird creaking of 
strained trees. The stream, with its greenish 
waters hurling themselves over the boulders and 
fretting against the ice sheets projecting from 
the banks, seemed like a messenger rushing 
headlong from the mountain to warn us back 
from impending danger. 

Uesting for a while under the shelter of a 



272 AT TEE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

giant hemlock, we called the birds. Two or 
three chickadees and two kinglets came to us, 
but they were subdued by the storm and shy 
about getting wet. Then we walked briskly 
homeward, the rain falling in earnest during the 
latter part of the way. A snowy fog rose from 
all parts of the valley, spreading most rapidly 
from the western end. The flat fields of snow 
vanished first; then the damp veil crept up the 
dark spruces and hid their tops; and finally 
mountain peak after mountain peak surrendered 
to the rising tide, and we were left alone in the 
dense fog with only a narrow circle of steam- 
ing snow around us. As the day wore on, rain 
fell faster and harder, the wind rose, it grew 
colder, and the blackness of the winter night 
would have been terrible but for the peace and 
comfort within doors. On such a night the 
deer in their "yards" must shiver with the 
chilling dampness; the grouse must find the 
snow too wet to sleep in ; and foxes and rabbits, 
if they leave their dens and forms at all, must 
regret the hunger which drives them out. 
Where are the crossbills and siskins ? I wish 
that I knew and could find them out, and take 
a friendly look at their ruffled feathers, their 
heads tucked under their wings, and perhaps 
dozens of their plump little bodies snuggled 
together in a dark, dry spruce. 



CHRISTMAS AT SABBA DAY FALLS. 

Christmas Day was warm, cloudy at best, 
densely foggy at worst. Soon after breakfast 
we were swinging westward up the valley road, 
determined to find Sabba Day Falls or perish 
in the attempt. As we passed the crossbill 
feeding - ground no birds were in sight, but a 
moment later, high in the air, we heard bird 
voices. Looking skyward, we saw a flock of 
from one to two hundred birds whirling round 
and round, like ashes drawn upwards over a 
fire. They were at a very great height, and 
were gradually rising. As they increased their 
distance they disappeared and reappeared sev- 
eral times; then they vanished wholly, swal- 
lowed up in the high air. I think they were 
our crossbills, goldfinches, and siskins, and that 
they were soaring in search of fair weather, 
perhaps intending to migrate to some other 
favorite haunt. Christmas Day is not a time 
when one expects much color in a White Moun- 
tain landscape, but the warm air, the moisture, 
and the contrasts against snow below and fog 
above combined to produce and to make evident 



274 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

a great deal of exquisite tinting in the shrubs 
of the fields and the forests of the mountain 
spurs. As we strode up the line of yellow mud 
which made the road, our path was bordered by 
shallow snow from which sprung an abundant 
growth of hardhack and spiraea. Taken in 
masses, their stems made a rich maroon, some- 
what dull near by, but warm and deep when 
seen across an acre of snow. A foot or two 
higher than these small shrubs were viburnums 
and small cherry and maple trees growing along 
the skirts of the forest. Their general tone was 
also dull red, though somewhat brighter than 
the spiraea. The next band of color was ashy 
mottled with dark green, and made probably by 
young birches, poplars, beeches, and hemlocks. 
Then came a belt of fog mingled with snowy 
smoke from the saw-mill, and above that a 
broad band of ashes-of-rose color, formed by 
the upper branches and twigs of the common 
deciduous trees. Above all were the spruces, 
always dark except when the piercing eye of 
the sun reveals the wonderful golden olive which 
they keep for him alone. 

The smoke of the saw-mill showed that the 
timber-eater finds no time for remembering the 
birthday of Jesus. Teams were moving as 
usual, carrying the green lumber down to the 
railway. The men employed to demolish our 



CHRISTMAS AT SABBA DAT FALLS. 275 

forests are poorly paid. A dollar a day and 
board is what the French Canadian receives 
here. Board is called fifty cents a day, and the 
married workman with a houseful of children 
lives on that sum. We passed the home of a 
French Canadian known in the valley as Bum- 
blebee. The house is twelve feet long by ten 
feet deep. The ridgepole is twelve feet from 
the ground. The chimney is a piece of stove- 
pipe. The walls are made of boards, battened, 
and the roof is unshingled. Bumblebee has 
five children, the eldest being eight. His wife's 
mind is affected. The standing timber, the 
mill, the lumber railway, and many of the dwel- 
lings and small farms belong to non-residents, 
whose only object is to shear the mountains, 
squeeze the laborers, and keep Congress from 
putting lumber on the free list. 

Not far beyond Bumblebee's one -room house 
we entered the primeval forest. We were fol- 
lowing the trail through the snow made by us 
on Sunday. When a quarter of a mile in, we 
were surprised to find a bear track crossing our 
path at right angles. The huge brute had 
passed that way on Tuesday or Wednesday, 
judging by the condition of the snow. On 
reaching the spot where we had aroused a barred 
owl on Sunday, we hid under some small hem- 
locks, thereby getting a thorough sprinkling, 



276 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

and I hooted. After my third attempt, I saw 
a great bird fly through the woods to a point 
only a hundred yards distant. In a moment or 
two I hooted again, and then made the fine 
squeaking noise which a mouse makes. The 
owl came nearer, and at once began hooting. 
During nearly ten minutes, in which we kept 
up a lively exchange of hoots, he varied his 
notes in several ways, sometimes keeping on, 
without pausing, from one series of hoots to an- 
other. I never heard a more talkative owl. At 
last he flew into a tree so near us that I could 
see him clearly through my glass. As he hooted, 
his throat swelled and pulsated. He searched 
the trees and the ground with his keen dark 
eyes. When at last he saw me, I seemed to 
feel the force of his glare. Then he turned his 
head to the left and flew away with long, soft 
sweeps of his wings. At a distance he resumed 
his hooting, which we could hear for some time 
as we strolled on up Sabba Day Brook. What 
we had supposed to be the river, on Sunday, 
proved to be Sabba Day Brook itself. The 
water was high, most of the ice had gone, and 
all the small brooks poured in liberal streams. 
In one pool I observed a small trout. At last 
we heard the thunder of the falls, and looked 
forward eagerly to see them. The stream 
seemed to issue from the solid rock, for directly 



CHRISTMAS AT SABBA DAY FALLS. 277 

across the channel rose a cliff of dark granite 
crowned with black spruces and one or two 
pines whose lofty tops were pale in the fog. As 
we drew near, the majestic beauty of the place 
became apparent. At the foot of the black cliff 
was a deep pool full of strange colors, — greens, 
olives, and white. The waters in it were rest- 
less, rising and settling back, but forever wash- 
ing the sides of their basin. Four gigantic 
icicles hung from the top of the cliff, extend- 
ing to the bottom. One of them, at its lower 
end, touched a flat shelf of rock, and so became 
a graceful column supporting the overhanging 
mosses from which it started. Another adhered 
to the rock all the way, and was a crystalline 
pilaster. The other two were free throughout 
the whole of their thirty feet of length, and 
tapered to needle points threatening the pool 
below. The colors in the pool were in fact bor- 
rowed from the mosses and ferns which grew in 
masses at the sides and upon the top of the cliff. 
Living in perpetual dampness, these exquisite 
plants flourish and become perfect examples of 
their kind. The trailing fern fronds were as 
green and as clean in outline as in summer. 
They sprang from beds of mosses wonderful in 
tints. Some were golden olive, others pale 
green, and still others blood red. Pressed 
against the upper edge of the black cliff, they 



278 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

were like a garland of bright flowers on the 
forehead of some sullen warrior. 

The water did not pour into this pool from 
the cliff, but came to it through a narrow flume 
or gap in the solid rock which had been con- 
cealed from us as we ascended the stream by the 
high wooded bank opposite the cliff. On reach- 
ing the edge of the pool, in the chill shadow of 
the black rock, we looked up the flume between 
narrow walls of dark gray granite, and saw, 
thirty feet or more beyond, another pool, into 
which was pouring from the left a great sheet 
of water. This fall, coming from a point fifty 
or sixty feet above us, and on the extreme left 
of the flume, had its side towards us; yet, after 
its green waters struck the upper pool and strug- 
gled there awhile, they came through the flume 
as their only outlet. Clambering up the right- 
hand or north bank, we gained a point where 
we could see all the details of this strange cata- 
ract. 

Sabba Day Brook above the falls flows nearly 
due east. It strikes a rocky hillside and is de- 
flected to the left by a sharp curve, so that it 
runs due north. In this direction it has worn 
a sloping passage to the edge of the falls. Drop- 
ping fifty feet into a great pot-hole, it turns 
abruptly to the east and flows out through the 
flume into the green pool, past the black ledge, 



CHRISTMAS AT SABBA DAY FALLS. 279 

and then, turning slightly towards the north, 
hurries on from basin to rapid on its way to the 
intervale. Standing on a shelf of snow-covered 
rock overhanging the angle in the fall, we first 
looked up at the water leaving its level above 
and hurrying towards its leap, and then down 
at the boiling pool below and the dashing water 
in the flume. These falls must be beautiful in 
summer, with sunlight playing in the leaves, 
blue sky lending color to the water, and rainbow 
tints gleaming in the uprising spray. They 
were also beautiful to-day, — Christmas Day, — 
when the loneliness of winter was brooding over 
the mountains, when ice and snow mingled in 
the surroundings of the falls, and when the gay 
coloring of the summer forest was replaced by 
the sombre tones of leafless trees. In summer 
some trace of man might have jarred upon the 
perfect solitude of the spot and made it seem 
less pure. As it was, standing in the untrodden 
snow, surrounded by the fog, the wild stream, 
the ice-sheathed rocks, I felt as one might if 
suffered to land for a while upon some far 
planet, strange to man, and consecrated to 
eternal cold and solitude. 

We turned away reluctantly and entered the 
old forest which stands between Sabba Day 
Brook and Swift River, a quarter of a mile to 
the north. The rumble of the falls grew fainter 



280 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

and fainter, then ceased. Blue jays flew 
through the tree-tops ; a great hawk floated by 
above the trees ; kinglets and a brown creeper 
lisped to us; chickadees, nuthatches, downy 
woodpeckers, and a great flock of singing sis- 
kins came in answer to our whistles; and red 
squirrels scolded us from their tree-strongholds. 
When we reached Swift River, we found it 
broad, still, and without a log or stones to cross 
upon. Having on water-tight hip-boots, I 
waded the stream, bearing my companion upon 
my shoulders. Entering a swamp on the far- 
ther shore, we observed fresh hedgehog tracks. 
In one place the fat beast had lain down in the 
snow, and some of his soft quills had frozen to 
his bed and pulled out when he trundled his 
body along again. At every labored step he 
left the print of his body in the snow, making a 
track as conspicuous as a man's. In a tangle 
of yew branches he had paused and nibbled 
bark from several stems. After following his 
trail a hundred yards or more, we lost it in a 
spruce thicket where the snow had melted. 

At the extreme western end of Swift River 
intervale stands a hill seven or eight hundred 
feet high, having long sloping lines and a 
pointed top. It is called Sugarloaf. Its sides 
are covered with as fine a growth of ancient 
trees as it is often one's fortune to find in New 



CHRISTMAS AT SABBA DAY FALLS. 281 

England. As this growth includes few spruces, 
hemlocks, or pines, it has escaped the timber 
fiends. There are among its trees giant yellow 
birches, saffron-colored in the mist; beeches a 
century old, with trunks moulded into shapes 
suggestive of human limbs strong in muscles, 
rock maples eighty or ninety feet high and 
hemlocks with coarse bark unbroken by limbs 
until, a hundred feet from the hillside, a mat 
of their interwoven branches finds the sunlight. 
The cultivated fields and pasture lands of the 
intervale are singularly free from rocks. Here 
and there a great boulder can be found, but it 
is conspicuous in its loneliness. On this hill- 
side, however, boulders of all shapes and sizes 
are strewn. Most of them are about the size 
of a load of hay. They are covered with showy 
lichens and the greenest of green mosses. Se- 
lecting one at the very summit of the hill, we 
searched under its overhanging sides for dry 
leaves and twigs. Then we broke an old stump 
into pieces and tore the curling bark from a 
prostrate birch. All this material was more or 
less damp, but by patience we secured a little 
bed of coals which soon dried the rest of our 
fuel, so that before long a bright blaze and a 
warm glow gladdened our eyes and comforted 
our chilled bodies. Then came our cheery 
Christmas dinner in the primeval forest, upon 



282 AT THE NORTII OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

a snow-covered hillside, under the projecting 
face of a great rock, beneath which we sat, 
with a ruddy fire crackling in front of us. 
Never Christmas dinner went straighter to the 

right spot. 

While we were resting and enjoying our fire, 
a flock of sweet-voiced pine grosbeaks came to 
neighboring tree-tops, a white-bellied nuthatch 
hung head downwards from a beech-trunk, and 
two downy woodpeckers called uneasily to each 
other. At last we extinguished our fire and de- 
scended the hill. Five grouse flew noisily from 
the hillside. Through the trees we could see 
the white ice on Church's Pond, and towards it 
we made our way. The pond is the last rem- 
nant of the great lake which in distant ages 
filled the whole of this intervale. Even now an 
area twenty times as large as the lake adjoins 
its water, and is almost level with it, being 
covered with sphagnum, laurel, pitcher-plant, 
and other bog growth, and offering very uncer- 
tain footing. Reaching the pond, we circled 
around it on the ice, cautiously keeping close to 
the shore, although a yoke of oxen could prob- 
ably have blundered across without danger. 
While we were on the lake the sunset hour 
passed, and a dense fog crept down upon the 
serrated spruce forest which borders the water. 
Three pine grosbeaks flew into the advancing 



CHRISTMAS AT SABBA DAY FALLS. 283 

mists, talking in gentle music to one another. 
One was left on a dead tree in the bog, and 
uttered a plaintive cry again and again. Leav- 
ing the ice, we struck across the frozen bog, 
now and then breaking through the soft places, 
but generally finding ice or roots to sustain our 
weary feet. As we progressed, we gathered an 
armful of club-mosses and a bunch of checker- 
berry plants bearing their gay fruit. The fog 
closed in around us, and the air became chilly. 
Not a mountain could we see. It was a relief to 
strike firm soil, though it was only a few inches 
higher than the bog. Presently we came to the 
river, and for a second time I shouldered my 
friend and took him over dry shod. After do- 
ing the same, a few moments later, at Sabba 
Day Brook, we gained the end of the intervale 
road near Bumblebee's hut. It was now grow- 
ing dark, yet a mile of yellow mud still lay be- 
fore us. Colors had faded; the graceful out- 
lines of the forest were dimmed; nothing but 
the martial spruces remained with us, drawn up 
in stiff lines beside the road. 

When we reached home, the Christmas greens 
and checkerberries were made by our inexperi- 
enced fingers into a cross, a wreath, and a long 
strip for festooning. These we presented to 
the three -year-old Lily of the intervale, whose 
ideas of Christmas had been obscured by the 



284 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

fact that no one had given her any presents. 
These offerings made matters better with her, 
and I fancied that she pommeled her four kit- 
tens less mercilessly than usual, as she gazed at 
the Christmas greens, and said many times to 
her grandmother, "Man dave dose to Diddy, 
he did." 



DOWN THE TORRENT'S PATHWAY. 

Saturday, December 26, our last day in the 
intervale, was the least pleasant of our visit. 
At eight A. M. fog covered the mountains, the 
forests, and everything, in fact, save a few acres 
of deep straw-colored field on which only a few 
soiled patches of snow remained. The engine 
came in promptly, but found no cars loaded, 
and went back to Bartlett without freight. 
About nine o'clock the millmen came home and 
said there were no logs at the saw-mill, the 
Frenchmen having been drunk on Christmas. 
There were rumors of fights among the revel- 
ers. About ten o'clock, having finished our 
packing, we took a short stroll in the rain. 
There were kinglets in the woods by the road- 
side, but no crossbills could be found at their 
favorite feeding-ground. I think they migrated 
Christmas morning. 

We crossed Swift River on the railway bridge 
and entered the tract of densely wooded swamp 
which occupies much of the northern side of the 
intervale. It was at this point that my friend 
saw the deer on Tuesday. As we strolled along 



286 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 

the track, the voices of birds could be heard on 
our left. Petulant, and even angry cries came 
from the damp shades. We stopped and lis- 
tened, and I said, "It sounds to me as though 
an owl were being worried in there." Then I 
entered the spruces, going very slowly and cau- 
tiously. Chickadees, nuthatches, and kinglets 
were chattering and scolding. I pressed in, 
sometimes working my way on hands and knees 
over the snow which still remained under the 
cover of the dense woods. By and by I could 
see some of the birds. They were evidently 
greatly excited, and they all seemed to be look- 
ing at the same thing, — a something around 
which they formed a circle. I crept on. Fully 
twenty small birds were in sight. Three at 
least were the weak-voiced, sputtering Hudson 
Bay titmice. Their clamor was continuous. 
When they saw me, they moved about and 
scolded at me somewhat. I closely scrutinized 
the tree which seemed to be the focus of their 
wrath. A dark brown object projected from 
the shelter of the trunk. It twitched. I wrig- 
gled on a foot or two more, and as I did so a 
strange little face peered around the tree-trunk, 
and wild, yellow eyes glared at me from a white 
face framed in a chocolate brown hood. I 
fairly held my breath and half closed my eyes 
while the tiny owl stared at me. Slowly he 



DOWN THE TORRENT'S PATHWAY. 287 

looked away, and flew a few feet to another 
spruce branch. He was now facing nie, and he 
watched me narrowly. Most of his accusers 
had gone, and soon all departed, the rain falling 
more briskly, and a cold easterly wind shaking 
moisture from the trees. The little owl shook 
himself and seemed melancholy. He was get- 
ting wet, and he did not like my looks at all. 
He flew again, and a second time I kept him 
within sight. His eyes were encircled by discs 
of white mingling with snowy eyebrows, so that 
nearly the whole of his monkey-like countenance 
was white. The back and top of his head were 
brown, and the same dark color closed in round 
his neck and throat, as a baby's cap closes 
round its face. The owl's breast was light, and 
marked by several broad perpendicular stripes 
of reddish brown. His back was dark, and so 
were his wings, save for some white spots. 
From the crown of his downy head to the soles 
of his wicked little clawed feet, this tiny Aca- 
dian measured not more than seven or eight 
inches. 

My constant watching made the little fellow 
very uneasy. He flew nine times from branch 
to branch or tree to tree, yet I managed to fol- 
low him closely. From one of his perches he 
could not see my face well, and it was amusing 
to see him stretch himself to his full height and 



288 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

peep over the obscuring branch. On another 
perch he was perfectly in view. As he watched 
me he tipped his head first on one side, then on 
the other. Then he would poke it forward or 
swing it round on his supple little neck, and 
strive to get my measure if not my purposes. I 
squeaked like a mouse, and he became agitated, 
looking keenly at the snow near me. Suddenly, 
without warning, he flew into a long, narrow 
opening in the spruces and disappeared in its 
windings. Our search for him was in vain, and 
we hurried home to dry ourselves once again 
before taking our long drive to Conway. 

One o'clock saw us beneath a huge cotton 
umbrella, packed under a fur robe, on the back 
seat of a light two-horse wagon. The east wind 
beat fiercely in our faces, and the horses shook 
their heads and danced as the rain stung them. 
The cloud masses rolled through the valley, ed- 
dying between the mountains much as the Swift 
River whirls around its boulders. Sometimes 
the mists opened and a dark face of forest or 
damp rock showed for a moment. With a 
crack of the whip and a good-by to our hostess 
we dashed away. Through the window I caught 
a last glimpse of little Diddy, curled up on a 
big feather-bed, taking her midday nap. Then 
flying mud, rain, horses, and soaking forests 
alone met the eye, and we hurried eastward. 



DOWN THE TORRENT'S PATHWAY. 289 

The level intervale was soon left behind, and 
the road began the descent towards the Saco. 
Swift River roared below us ; brooks came tum- 
bling down their rough channels, poured under 
or across the road, and merged their currents 
in the river's. The trees swayed and shook 
rain from their shoulders. Now in front of 
us, now to our left, the madly descending river 
and its presiding mountain walls were always 
in sight. The bare faces of the ledges, the rent 
hillsides and sloping sand-banks, the boulders 
heaped in countless numbers in the river bed, 
all told of forgotten days like this day of storm- 
fury, when the waters of the pent-up lake in 
the valley we had left rebelled against these 
hillsides and ledges, and tore them in frag- 
ments, sweeping over them towards the liberty 
of water, — the sea. 

The northern spurs of Chocorua came towards 
us through the mist as though to crush us ; but 
the horses dashed on, leaving their threatening 
heights behind. Then Bear Mountain's black 
spruces and glistening cliffs barred our way; 
but we followed the river's lead and came out 
into the pastures and fields next to Moat. Af- 
ter nearly three hours of soaking, our steaming 
horses drew up at Conway station, and we were 
left to dry and await the train. Letters ac- 
cumulated during the week made the time pass 



290 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

quickly until the train came and we were fairly 
homeward bound. The storm hid the moun- 
tains and half obscured Six Mile Pond and its 
ragged pitch-pine shores. Rain — cold, sting- 
ing, winter rain — beat upon the Bearcamp, 
Salmon Falls, the Piscataqua, and the Merri- 
mac. The night inside of Salem tunnel was no 
darker than the night on Saugus marshes, and 
even the myriad lights of Boston reflected in 
the Mystic only made the winter gloom more 
visible. As I struggled through the Saturday- 
night crowd on the narrow streets near the sta- 
tions, and marked the faces of waif and thief, 
drunkard, jester, sordid vender of evil wares, 
weary workman or thrice weary workwoman, 
my heart was heavier than it had been in the 
wild valley back of Passaconaway. Even Bum- 
blebee, with his sick wife and five children, 
crowded into one room in that hut by Sabba 
Day Brook, had something of life of which this 
foul city humanity knows nothing. Certainly 
Bumblebee's boys lack the chance to absorb the 
virus of the slums which the wretched waifs of 
the streets have. As I waited for my Cam- 
bridge car, the stream of humanity surged and 
eddied round me and the foul fog hung over 
us. Swift River, plunging on resistlessly to- 
wards the sea, is seeking rest, far away ; but this 
stream of humanity, • — what is it seeking? To 




MOAT MOUNTAIN ANO THE SWIFT RIVER 



DOWN THE TORRENT'S PATHWAY. 291 

me it seemed to be seeking anything but the 
rest, everything but the peace, to which its cur- 
rent ought to tend. 

Fast and furious as is the torrent of Swift 
River, its beginning is in the heavens, and as 
long as the noble forests cloak the hills and 
guard the springs, so long will its current be 
sustained by fresh supplies of moisture drawn 
from the distant sea. This human current, 
coursing into and through the city, draws a 
part of its strength from the hills. All our 
New England uplands are draining their youth 
and strength into the cities, but the ocean which 
these life-streams reach gives back no gentle, 
purified life to fill the mountain farms. It 
takes all, pollutes much, but yields nothing in 
return. 

A deep-toned bell in the Old North Church 
spoke to the foggy night. Answering voices 
came from a dozen belfries. They seemed to 
call in review the long year now drawing to its 
close. Years are as days to them in their high 
places far above the human stream, but years 
are very real to us who can count so few of 
them before we reach that wide Ocean towards 
which our stream flows. The flower has a day 
for its year, the gnat an hour. What a mighty 
harvest Death has reaped since this year began ; 
yet no one expects any shrinkage in the current 



292 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER. 

of life in the next year. The world's rhythm 
will be just as strong, just as even, just as full 
of joy to those who will accept joy as the birds 
accept it. What, then, is death if it cannot 
diminish the sum total of creation's forces? Is 
it more than a transfer of energy from one point 
to another? When the flower dies we can see 
and measure the transfer; when a man dies we 
who live cannot see it all, but we can measure 
the poor shell which is left to us and feel sure, 
terribly sure at first, joyously sure in time, that 
all which was there in life is not still there; 
that something has been transferred where we 
can neither see nor measure it. 

The year begins in snow and ends in snow. 
When it begins, the pendulum of life is far up 
at the left of its arc, all its force is gathered 
in position, none is displayed in motion. But 
suddenly the pendulum begins to move; it is 
falling; it moves faster and faster towards the 
right. Then it is that snows melt, buds swell, 
birds come northward singing, dormant crea- 
tures leave their caves, and all Nature displays 
her latent energy in motion. Just when the 
motion of the pendulum is fastest it passes that 
middle and lowest point in its arc and begins to 
turn its momentum into the force of position. 
Up it goes, and as it ascends to the far right, 
it goes more and more slowly until finally it 



DOWN THE TORRENT'S PATHWAY. 293 

stops. This upward swing in Nature begins 
when the first flowers fade, the first nestlings 
are hatched, and the first leaves fall. In sum- 
mer we do not always notice the lessening speed 
of Nature's motions; not until autumn comes 
do we realize that the days are shorter, the sun's 
rays less warm, the birds fewer, and vegetation 
almost without power of growth. In December 
the pendulum stops and all that Nature has of 
energy is latent, awaiting the turn in the 
world's rhythm. 

The baby, gurgling and cooing in its basket, 
is full of latent forces. As life goes on, these 
powers are exercised more and more to the flood, 
less and less as the tide ebbs. Yet who is there 
who dares to say that when old age is reached 
there is not as much laid by in that soul 
wrapped in its weary body as there was in the 
infant full of latent power? We know not 
where the infant's forces came from, nor where 
the dying man's energy goes to, but if Nature 
teaches us anything, it teaches us that forces 
such as these are eternal in the same sense that 
matter is eternal and space endless. 



INDEX. 



Albany, 44, 212, 217, 230. 

Alder, 196, 212. 

Amelancbier, 195. 

American holly, 195. 

Ant, 182. 

Apple-tree, 195. 

Arenaria grcenlandica, 26. 

Arrowhead, 47. 

Ash, 4. 

Aster, 39, 47, 134, 153, 176, 259, 266. 

Balsam flr, 22, 149. 

Barberry, 195. 

Bat, 76, 98, 132. 

Bear, 35, 82-95, 148, 153, 233, 275. 

Bearcamp Valley, 23, 43, 168, 195, 

214. 
Bearcamp Water, 23, 43, 290. 
Bee, 86, 135, 139, 181, 185. 
Beech, 15, 49, 50, 179, 187, 188, 196, 

208, 246, 274, 281. 
Birch, 7, 195, 207, 246, 274 ; canoe, 

4, 39, 50, 85 ; gray, 38, 139 ; yellow, 

4, 49, 281. 
Birch Intervale, 71, 257. 
Bittern, 30, 36. 
Blackberry, 12, 48, 179, 191. 
Blueberry, 40, 89, 93, 191, 195. 
Bluebird, 125, 126, 165, 170. 
Bobolink, 126. 
Boston, 228, 290. 
Bristletails, 181. 
Brown creeper, 165, 262, 280. 
Brunella, 12, 47, 266. 
Buttercups, 181, 259. 

Caddis-worm, 59. 
Campton, 23, 43. 
Catbird, 98, 114, 116, 130. 
Cedar-bird, 103, 107, 116, 120, 130, 

143. 
Champney Falls brook, 154. 
Checkerberry, 12, 39, 204, 259, 283. 
Chewiuk, 226. 



Chickadee, blackcap, 7, 11, 107, 113, 

119, 130, 143, 165, 184, 202, 241, 

253, 262, 272, 286; Hudson Bay, 

218, 254, 258, 286. 
Chocorua Lake, 10, 71, 89, 97, 171, 

182, 217. 
Chocorua River, 225. 
Choke-cherry, 179. 
Church's Pond, 243, 282. 
Clematis, 196. 
Clintonia, 48. 
Clover, red, 12, 181 ; white, 12, 181, 

259 ; yellow, 12. 
Club-mosses, 204, 283. 
Conway, 43, 44, 71, 230, 232, 289. 
Cornel, 12, 39, 40, 48. 
Crickets, 181. 
Crossbill, red, 239, 244, 248, 257, 

264; white, 250. 
Crow, 3, 11, 13, 99, 102, 103, 106, 

143, 164, 173. 

Daisy, 12. 
Dalibarda, 47. 
Deer, 25, 35, 255, 258. 
DiervUla, 24. 
Dogbane, 9, 12. 
Downes brook, 267, 268. 
Dragonfly, 13, 114, 182. 
Duck, black, 36, 128, ICO, 165 ; shel- 
drake, 128, 212 ; wood, 36, 128, 225. 

Eagle, 127. 

Evening primrose, 12. 

Ferns, 2, 3, 19, 22, 39, 85, 134, 143, 

179 259 277. 
Fireweed,'49, 196. 
Flax, 89, 126. 
Fleabane, 12. 
Fly, 74, 181, 207. 
Fox, 30, 133, 205, 243, 258. 
Frog, 36, 98, 106, 114 ; wood, 14, 186, 
Fungi, 48, 59. 



296 



INDEX. 



Geese, 128. 

Goldenrod, 11, 26, 39, 40, 45, 47, 

134, 153, 17G, 181, 19G, 203, 204, 

266. 
Goldfinch, 102, 107, 124, 125, 143, 

165, 239, 244, 204. 
Grasshopper, 204. 
Grouse, 14, 03, 121, 18G, 227, 255, 

250, 282 ; Canada, 155. 
Gull, herring, 129. 

Hardhack, 47, 274. 

Hare, 1, 133, 205, 252, 254, 258. 

Harvest-fly, 119. 

Hawk, 205, 250, 258, 280 ; Cooper's, 
14, 37, 110, 127 ; marsh, 37 ; red- 
shouldered, 37,100; sharp-shinned, 
110, 127, 160. 

Hawkweed, 181. 

Hemlock, 49, 149, 188, 272, 274. 

Heron, blue, 30, 36, 42, 108-110, 
117, 127 ; night, 36, 128. 

Houeysuckle, 88. 

Hornet, 87, 93. 

Hornpout, 37, 41. 

Houstonia, 12, 40, 203. 

Huckleberry, 179. 

Humruiug-bird, 38, 107, 116, 139. 

Hyla, 119. 

Immortelles, 47, 176. 
Indian pipe, 13, 48, 266. 

Jay, blue, 0, 101, 110, 130, 131, 143, 
1C5, 241, 245, 258, 280; Canada, 
155, 270. 

Juuco, 25, 69, 80, 124, 164, 173, 202, 

248. 

Kingbird, 101, 105, 111, 114, 116. 

Kingfisher, 30, 102. 
Kinglet, 120, 143, 165, 202, 248, 250, 
253, 262, 272, 280, 285. 

Lambkill, 24, 192, 282. 
Larch, 195. 

Least flycatcher, 103, 107. 
Lichen, 3, 4, 7, 23, 60, 259. 
Liunaa, 8, 16, 21, 39. 
Locust, 181, 185, 204. 
Locust-tree, 126. 
Loon, 128. 

Madison, 198. 

Maple, 48, 50, 54, 88, 134, 142, 153, 

1G0, 203, 213, 259, 274. 
Mr.yfiower, 21, 39, 259. 
Mink, 32, 258. 
Mole, 139, 141, 145. 



Morning-glory, 185. 

Mosquito, 6. 

Moss, 3, 19, 39, 60, 248, 259, 277. 

Mountain, Anderson, 57, 66, 67 
Bald, 26, 205 ; Bear, 57, 230, 234i 
235, 236, 243-251, 263, 289 ; Black 
(Sandwich Dome), 23, 63, 89, 178 
Bond, 57; Carrigain, 57, 66, 67, 236 
249, 262 ; Chocorua, 7, 8, 11, 23 
57, 62-81, 82, 90, 142, 154, 157 
178, 201, 204-208, 216, 230, 236 
249, 2S9 ; Franconia, 57, 66, 249 
Green's Cliffs, £36, 262; Kancama- 
gUB, 236, 243, 249, 262; Lowell, 
57, 6G, 67, 236; Moat, 230, 232 
233, 249, 289 ; Nancy, 57, 66, 67 
Osceola, 236; Ossipee, 23, 193 
228; Pequawket, 71, 232, 249 
Passaconaway, 23, 44, 146, 154 
178, 201, 236, 249, 257, 261, 271 
Paugus, 23, 43, 52, 57, 144, 146- 
156, 178, 201, 236, 257,261 ; Presi- 
dential, 66; Sandwich, 23, 146. 
169, 230 ; Tremont, 236, 262 
Tripyramid, 6G, 236, 243, 249 
Washington 193, 232, 249 ; White 
face, 23, 63, 178, 201 ; Whittier, 
178 ; Willey, 57. 

Mountain ash, 44, 88, 89, 134, 153. 

Mouse, 74, 132-145, 186, 205, 258. 

Mullein, 47 

Muskrat, 31. 

Night-hawk, 37, 38, 77, 100, 123. 
Nuthatch, red-bellied, 119, 130, 143, 

165, 241, 246, 248, 250, 280, 286 ; 

white-bellied, 120, 105, 246, 253, 

282. 

Oak, 29, 88, 132, 179, 191, 196, 204, 

208, 225. 
Oliverian brook, 257-261. 
Olive-sided flycatcher, 53, 105. 
Orchis, 3, 21. 
Osprey, 127, 130, 202. 
Ossipee Lake, 71, 190, 214. 
Owl, Acadian, 287 ; barred, 36, 100, 

116, 132, 183, 241, 260, 276. 
Oxalis, 21. 

Partridge-berry, 16, 259. 
Paugus Falls, 151, 155. 
Paugus River, 147, 219, 223. 
Pemigewasset Valley, 43, 178. 
Pewee, bridge, 107, 130, 160; wood, 7. 
Pickerel, 98, 114. 
Pickerel- weed, 116. 
Pine, pitch, 226 ; white, 39, 97, 135, 
171, 180, 183. 



INDEX. 



297 



Pine finch, 239, 24C, 248, 250, 253, 

264, 280. 
Pine grosbeak, 208, 250, 282. 
Pine sap, 14. 
Pipsissewa, 13, 39, 204. 
Pitcher plant, 282. 
Poplar, 7, 192, 207, 203^274. 
Porcupine, 34, 35, 5G, 65, 133, 280. 
Potentilla, 12, 26. 
Purple finch, 124, 253. 
Pyrola, 13. 

Raccoon, 33, 258. 

Rattlesnake plantain, 48. 

Robin, 107, 120, 130, 143, 165, 171, 

173, 202. 
Rose, wild, 2. 
Rusty grackle, 126. 

Sabba Day Falls, 143, 273-284. 

Saco River, 43, 232. 

St. John's-wort, 11, 47. 

Sandpiper, solitary, 98, 105, 115, 
116 ; spotted, 98. 

Sandwich, 23, 43. 

8hrew, 141. 

Six Mile Pond, 198, 290. 

Skunk, 35, 133, 199. 

Skunk cabbage, 3. 

Suowberry, 40. 

Suow-bunting, 234, 241, 265. 

Solomon's seal, 88. 

Sparrow, chipping, 124 ; field, 11, 
124 ; song, 99, 104, 124, 125 ; tree, 
131, 173, 202, 244 ; vesper, 124, 
125 ; white-crowned, 164 ; white- 
throated, 25, 68, 80, 124, 125, 164, 
173. 

Sphagnum, 22, 92, 153, 259, 282. 

Spider, 181. 

Spiraea, 12, 274. 

Spiranthes, 47. 

Spruce, 26, 50, 89, 149, 154, 204, 

234, 236, 244, 252, 261, 274. 
Squam Lake, 23. 

Squirrel, flying, 33; gray, 33, 132, 
140, 188, 208, 209 ; red, 34, 53, 
102, 208, 238, 245, 251, 252, 255 ; 
striped, 6, 33, 34, 145, 172, 251. 

Sumac, 47, 134, 153. 

Swallow, bank, 123 ; barn, 104, 123 ; 
eaves, 123; martin, 123; white- 
breasted, 124. 

Sweet fern, 179. 

Sweet pea, 185, 203. 

Swift, 107. 

Swift River, 43, 142, 154, 230. 233. 

235, 244, 255, 280, 285, 'JS8, 280. 



Swift River Intervale, 44, 45, 58, 67, 
71, 141. 

Tadpole, 12, 22, 32, 36, 41. 

Tamworth, 44, 219. 

Tanager, 38, 130. 

Tom, black, 36, 129 ; Wilson's, 129. 

Thistle, 47. 

Thrush, hermit, 1,11, 23, 28,80,97, 
11G, 165; Swainson's, 24, 80, 99, 
119 ; veery, 1, 2, 3, 11, 98, 107. 

Toad, 15, C3. 

Tree-frog, 7, 119. 

Trout, 18, 40, 203, 215, 276. 

Turtle, 13, 41. 

University Hall, 157. 

Veratrum, 3. 

Vervain, 47. 

Viburnum, hobble-bush, 44, 49, 134, 
191, 259, 274. 

Violet, 192. 

Vireo, red-eyed, 1, 14, 23, 63, 104, 
112, 119, 130, 143; Philadelphia, 
39 ; solitary, 23, 120, 130, 165. 

West Ossipee, 170. 

Warbler, black and white creeping, 
120; Blackburnian, 120; black- 
poll, 26 ; black-throated blue, 23, 
120; black-throated green, 120; 
Canadian fly-catching, 120 ; chest- 
nut-sided, 99, 112, 120; magnolia, 
25, 120 ; Maryland yellow-throat, 
1, 99, 101, 102, 107, 143; myrtle, 
120, 165 ; oven-bird, 14, 23 ; parula, 
7; redstart, 112, 120; Wilson's 
blackcap, 100, 107, 113, 120. 

Whippoorwill, 1, 28, 37, 98, 130, 132. 

White Pond, 224. 

Whitton Pond, 211, 215, 217. 

Wild cherry, 44, 93, 259. 

Willow, 192. 

Winnepesaukee Lake, 23, 89. 

Winter wren, 2, 122. 

Witch-hazel, 203. 

Woodbine, 134. 

Woodchuck, 33, 172. 

Woodpecker, downy, 280, 282 ; flick- 
ev, 101, 104, 100, 110, 116, 120, 
130, 143 ; pileated, 218 : sapsuck- 
ing, 14.38, 116, 130, 139; three- 
toed, 155, 247. 

Yarrow, 12, 181. 
Yellow-bellied flycatcher, 112. 
Yew, 60, 280. 



<£be Ritiersi&r pre** 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSKTTS 
U . S . A 



